Angels Of Mercy
by StrangePenguin
Summary: THE TWO LAST CHAPTERS ARE UP! There are still some explanations in the offing...THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR PATIENCE! Please R
1. Prologue

Okay, your break wasn't too long this time, but I hope you can forgive me! ;-) Well, I chose a very tricky subject for my new fanfic and I'm aware of the fact that loads of different opinions do exist about it, so please let me know what you think. Thanks for reading this and as always I'd appreciate your reviews. I excuse for all grammatical mistakes and stuff, thanks for your patience with me bloody stupid German! *g* As always great thanks to Wuemsel for being my Brain in a double meaning, for Obst, for Heeeeeeuuuulen (still love you for it, gurl) and for THE cream (Nimm den Kuli wech!!).  
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of DM, meaning mainly Dr Mark Sloan, Dr Jesse Travis, Lt. Steve Sloan and Dr Amanda Bentley and some other guys. This story was written for pleasure and not with the intention to make any profit with it (again, show me one person who'd pay for this!).  
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The Hippocratic Oath  
  
I swear in the presence of the Almighty and before my family, my teachers and my peers that according to my ability and judgment I will keep this Oath and Stipulation. To reckon all who have taught me this art equally dear to me as my parents and in the same spirit and dedication to impart a knowledge of the art of medicine to others. I will continue with diligence to keep abreast of advances in medicine. I will treat without exception all who seek my ministrations, so long as the treatment of others is not compromised thereby, and I will seek the counsel of particularly skilled physicians where indicated for the benefit of my patient.  
  
I will follow that method of treatment which according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patient and abstain from whatever is harmful or mischievous. I will neither prescribe nor administer a lethal dose of medicine to any patient even if asked nor counsel any such thing nor perform the utmost respect for every human life from fertilization to natural death and reject abortion that deliberately takes a unique human life. With purity, holiness and beneficence I will pass my life and practice my art. Except for the prudent correction of an imminent danger, I will neither treat any patient nor carry out any research on any human being without the valid informed consent of the subject or the appropriate legal protector thereof, understanding that research must have as its purpose the furtherance of the health of that individual. Into whatever patient setting I enter, I will go for the benefit of the sick and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief or corruption and further from the seduction of any patient.  
  
Whatever in connection with my professional practice or not in connection with it I may see or hear in the lives of my patients which ought not be spoken abroad, I will not divulge, reckoning that all such should be kept secret. While I continue to keep this Oath unviolated may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art and science of medicine with the blessing of the Almighty and respected by my peers and society, but should I trespass and violate this Oath, may the reverse by my lot.  
  
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Minnesota, 1990  
Dr Phillip Morton and his team hadn't found much time to relax on this day. They had been kept busy with the victims of a huge car crash coming in and everytime things had started to calm down slowly there had been new patients being brought in who needed the whole attention of the staff.  
  
So it was understandable that even Dr Morton, head of the ER at the County Hospital of Minneapolis, as passionate and enthusiastic as he normally was sighed in pure exhaust when he finally came to a seat in the doctor's lounge where a cup of coffee had been awaiting him for hours. Of course, the coffee didn't taste anymore and Morton decided quickly that he would leave the filled mug for the next poor fellow who'd come in and find that Phillip had completely emptied the can with the fresh hot coffee.  
  
The doctor had just sat about ten minutes, enjoying thinking of God, the world and nothing at the same time when Ewan Jones appeared in the doorframe, wearing a worried glance on his face that was about typical for the young pediatrican referring to a certain topic. "Phil...we need you in the ER..." Ewan knew that it was all he had to say to make Morrison understand.  
  
Phillip sighed heavily. Only for a moment he had wanted to sit here and think of nothing. Not even these kinds of problems, although he hated himself for it. He couldn't just look away. Nevertheless, it was all he wanted to do sometimes. He got up, his gaze remaining on Jones who watched his friend with pitiful helplessness in his eyes.  
  
"How bad?", he inquired, however, he felt that he knew the answer already.  
  
Reading his mind, Ewan nodded. "Very bad...", he trailed off, fearing to see the awareness of himself being right in Morris' eyes. It was always the worst. Not the fear of seeing the sorrow. It was the fear of realization in those eyes that forced Jones to miss his friend's eyes so often lately.  
  
Standing in front of the examination room, Phillip shortly hesitated, then sighed weakly and threw his friend a firm look. Or at least he hoped it was firm. Inside he was scared beyond believe. "I'm gonna take care of her, Ewan. Thanks..."  
  
Ewan frowned, but he knew his friend. "You sure?" A slight nod and an sad smile was all he got, but yet, the pediatrican hadn't expect more. This was just too hard.  
  
When Phillip entered the room and scrutinisized the young girl that lay on the stretcher, pale and apathic, he was shocked to discover once again that this girl had not much in common with the lifely, curious kid he had known for ages. Only one thing hadn't changed. He loved her more than anything else.  
  
As her gaze drifted over to him and the two brown wet eyes recognized him, she reached out her hand or more likely tried to. I no time he was next to her, squeezing her little hand and stroking her hair carefully. She was maybe twelve years old, yet she seemed to have aged over the last month. Not only her face and head wore signs of the chemo therapy as well as her thin skinny body, but also her bright smile and her direct, engaging way had suffered.  
  
They sat together in silence, simply enjoying every minute they could spend with each other, he still being able to be some kind of protection to her and she still feeling the comfort of his calming presence. Only after a while she lifted her glazed wet eyes at him again and Phil felt his heart breaking in two pieces when he heard a barely audible whisper:"Please, make it stop. Make it stop hurting!"  
  
Too often Phillip had heard those words out of her mouth. Too often had he had to listen to that desperate beg and had promised -against better knowledge- that it would stop hurting soon. Right now, he had to admit that he had lied. For his own good. So often had he tried to tell himself that there was no way of stopping the pain, no earthly power that could prevent the things from happening, but he had never managed to do so completely. His knowledge had always been stronger. There was a power and it was in his hands.  
  
Seeing those brown eyes, having seen them suffering for so long, had finally caused Morton coming to a fateful decision.  
  
Taking a viole of calium chlorid that he filled into a syringe, Phillip never looked away from the girl. Her painful eyes indirectly directed him through filling the syringe, they were the reason and his reminder that prevented him from wasting any thoughts about the future. This mattered more to him.  
  
Aiming at the vein with the needle, injecting the KCl, all this happened as though it was in a dream. The only thing that Morrison should be able to remember later were the words he spoke in calming confidence. "Don't worry, honey, it will stop hurting. I promise it will...I love you, honey!"  
  
When she heard that she smiled. "I love you, too...daddy..." Then she closed her eyes and seconds later the heart monitor started beeping violently before the curve settled in a never-ending beep and total flatline. Gone. She was gone.  
  
"Hey, Dr Morton I thought you might need some hel...", the young intern that had just entered the room stopped dead in the doorway, a loudless 'Oh my God' replaying on his lips. Phil whirled around and threw a glance to his intern who seemed to be completely frozen where he was, wearing typical unexperienced horror in his big blue eyes.  
  
Morton still held the viole with the calium chlorid in his hands, the syringe as well. Strangely it was only now that he snapped out of his trance. He had been knowing what he was doing all the time, but until now it had all been apart from this world, from the real life. He looked at the instruments in his hands as if he would be seeing them for the very first time.  
  
Jesse couldn't do anything. At first he had had the intention to help the resident, when he had seen the flatline and had only wanted bring that girl back to live but by the same second he had noticed the little bottle in Phil's hands. And that was the moment that something inside him had clicked. The way Phil looked into the space and now looked at him and through him at the same time, let Jesse sense that what he was thinking was right. "Wha...", he started and stopped as soon as he noticed that he didn't even know what he should say. "Phil...what...", he stammered again, looking at his supervisor, pleadingly. He wanted Phil to say somthing. That he was misinterpreting that scene, that the girl on the examination table had died of natural causes, that nothing of what he believed -that the the calium chlorid and the syringe in Morris' hand had anything to do with it- was true.  
  
The young intern's heart raced the longer he waited for an answer, a word from the man he had always admired so much for his capability, for his sense of humor, for his honesty. A word that would have declared everything as a misunderstanding. But nothing like that came.  
  
Confusion and fear evident in his eyes, Jesse remained at the door, not sure if there had ages or just seconds passed since he had last moved.  
  
Phillip sighed. He really hadn't wanted Jesse to witness that. He just hadn't been thinking of him. Normally no one dared to disturb when he was alone with his daughter, the staff of the ER had got used to that, but Jesse hadn't been here long enough to know that. And now that young man had stumbled into a situation that he seemed to understand immediatly which was on the one hand a clear and strong proof for his sharp mind, on the other hand it also confronted him with a factor of medicine that even the sharpest mind wouldn't have been able to deal with. He was still too young, Phil thought and closed his eyes for a moment. He had to do something. He couldn't leave it like this. That would have destroyed him and his career -though Phil was really shocked to discover that he was thinking of his own future as a doctor right now- and also he believed that it would destroy some part of his intern's faith in medicine. And that was certainly of no good for such a talented boy like Jesse was. "I see you in the lounge in ten minutes!", Phillip said as firmly as he could and was about as astonished as Jesse himself as he saw his intern nodding obediently.  
Phillip felt like walking somewhere between heaven and earth when he headed for the lounge exactly nine minutes after the event had occured in the examination room. He had been busy with declaring the time of death and getting hugged and pitied by the nurses in charge. Their sympathies were meant nicely, however, right now he didn't give a damn on them. The past fifteen minutes had been enough to change his life. Forever. After years or work, of love, of joy and sadness, his world had been turned around within one second. In the second when he had made a decision of which he was sure he would never regret it. Not matter what would happen to him, no matter how hard they would try to make him believe what he had done was wrong, he knew that he would never waste a thought of what would have been if he hadn't injected her the calium chlorid. As much as he wanted to regret it, he didn't.  
  
Nevertheless, Morton sensed that he had failed a at certain other point once he had thrown a glance through the half-opened door of the doctor's lounge. A young man sat there on a screwed down chair, holding a mug in his hand as though it was the last rock that prevented him from falling of a huge cliff.  
  
Jesse felt about as empty as the mug that he was nearly jamming between his fingers. Furiosity crawled through his body, but right now he was too confused and had to handle too many mixed feelings at the same time. There were so many questions he wanted to ask the doctor and not a single one would cross his lips. When Phillip entered the room, the intern looked up, wearing a cold look in his eyes. Jesse had never thought he would be able to produce such an icy glare, neither he had awaited seeing this glare reflected by calm serious looks.  
  
Morton sighed as though he was exhausted, which wasn't only acted, but partly true since the past fifteen minutes had taken more of his strength than anything else in his life had ever done. Sitting down across the table, he took his mug with the again gone-cold coffee and sipped.  
  
That way both of them remained there for ages, none of them daring to speak. Jesse was shocked to discover that he wasn't just angry with the displaced calmness in Morton's expressions, mostly, as the nervous feeling in his stomach told him, he was scared of his supervisor. Scared beyond believe. If he had looked up and met Phillip's eyes, he probably would have noticed the same fear in those. Also Phillip was scared, but as his young protègè he hid that feeling in the distracted absence of mind he replayed. "You killed her!", someone suddenly whispered, with a voice that was so faint that Phillip at first guessed that he had only imagined it.  
  
Only at the second "You killed her!" he noticed Jesse's lips were moving. Jesse heard himself saying that, yet, he didn't understand it. His voice just didn't match the way he felt, he was angry, confused, scared, but his tone only expressed plain surprise, seemingly neutral astonishment. Then he realized that his head suddenly jerked up, subconsciously he wanted his eyes to give Morton an idea of what he actually wanted to tell him after his voice had failed.  
  
And again Morton did something Jesse neither expected nor appreciated. He looked at him. Jesse had wanted him to miss his eyes in order to hide the shame from him, the young intern, but there was no shame. When Phillip slowly nodded his head to acknowledge Jesse's realization, there was sadness in his eyes, nothing but deep honest sadness.  
  
That deliberate movement without any reluctance forced Jesse's rage to become bigger than his fear and he all of sudden jumped up. "Damnit! What kind of a man are you? How can you just sit there like this and do....nothing?!", he cried out, madly.  
  
Phillip considered for a moment what to do. He could shout at Jesse, scare him even more than he probably was, but that was certainly not the way. Jesse should understand it. That was the last thing Phillip wanted to teach him. That there was still a difference between acceptance and understanding and if you couldn't give the first, the second was the least to give then.  
  
He had no choice, he had to provoke him. Hiding the quivering in his tone, he asked:"Do you remember what I told you about not becoming too emotional about things that happen to you here? Can you recall that..."  
  
Jesse's eyes narrowed and cynical remark was the first one to come to his mind and he didn't see a reason why he shouldn't speak it out. "What about you told me about not doing harm to patients? Not abusing my power? Does that ring any bell? What about that?", he hissed, full of emotion, not caring what that so called doctor had to say about it.  
  
"I told you becoming too emotional would take your clear look at the facts...", Phillip continued as though lecturing a kid. "...and your understanding..." He lifted his gaze at Jesse. piercing him with a watchful look. "Do you understand now?", he asked insistingly.  
  
"Oh yeah, I do understand!", Jesse yelled, his fingers clenched, his knuckles white. "I do understand that you killed the little girl, I do understand that you don't seem to give a damn on your goddamn rules yourself, I...", he trailed off, searching for words. He blushed. The more he had shouted the more he had noticed that he didn't understand it at all. He didn't understand how Phillip could do something like that. He didn't understand why anyone would do something like that. Kill for purpose. Confusion settled on his face. No, he really didn't understand.  
  
Seeing, slightly triumphingly, that he had got Jesse where he had wanted to have him, Phillip now opened his mouth to explain everthing. To make him understand. "The girl that died in there was...my daughter, Carla. She had cancer....final stage..." He watched how Jesse's widened in shock a the revealed truth. He hesitated to speak on and the words only reluctantly left his mouth. "And I didn't kill her because I wanted to abuse my power or anything...I killed her because I loved her..." He listened to his own words in displeasure, feeling awkward. Could you really kill someone because you loved him? Or was it only a selfish desire of playing God?  
  
Jesse still stood from where he had yelled at Phillip, bowing his head, if only almost unrecognizable. Where there had been a clear black-white- picture of ethic for him before, since what Phillip had done was certainly abominable, ethic was for the very first time showing its grey nuances.  
  
The silence between them gained for ages but without Jesse himself noticing it, his look had softened a bit.  
  
Phillip felt that it was his turn to say something. "Now you have all the facts", he stated, tonelessly. Then he lifted his eyes on Jesse for a very last insisting look. That was all he needed to know that Jesse had understood. He was a smart boy, Morton had known that before. "Now you can make your choice!"  
  
At those words, Jesse's blood started pounding in his ears. He hadn't even thought of it before but indeed Morton's future was laying in his hands. If he reported him to the hospital board, they would surely fire him and withdraw his license to practise medicine, maybe there would even charges being pressed. There was no syringe, no poison. There was no need of any medical instrument to turn someone's life around. And yet a same decisive power was put into Jesse's hands now and it didn't feel good to him. Just huge and scaring.  
  
Not able to reply anything, he only nodded again, halfly heading to the door already. When he had finally reached it, he stopped for a second though, casting Morton a nearly sympathesising glance and brought himself to put into words one of the mixed up emotions that he was certain about. "I'm sorry about your daughter. Really."  
  
When Morton murmured a weak "Thanks", and Jesse left, running away, aimlessly.  
  
Phillip stayed, feeling all energy drained from his body within one second. His strength had been needed and used for this last lecture. He didn't know what would come next, right now he wasn't interested at all. Right now he only sat here, waiting patiently for the tears to come finally. He didn't need to wait too long.  
To Be Continued... 


	2. Chapter 1

Hey again! Thanks for all your reviews, nice to see that most of you like the story! Well, then I'm gonna go on with the next part, we're in the present again. Huge thanks to Brain, for a sweet little card and please let Bonn stay standing, we still need it! I definitly spent too much time with you as this chapter shows. Never mind, vom-Stuhl-kippen vor!!  
  
All disclaimers apply.  
Dr Jesse Travis moaned slightly. It was the third Aspirin he was taking today, the third in less than five hours to be exact. Aware of the fact that it certainly didn't make the best impression if doctors swallowed one pill after another during their shifts, he had gone into the restroom and used masses of water, however, only a little of it to bring the headache- killer down his gullet and more of it to squirt it into his pale, worn-out looking face, hoping that it would wash away some of the dark circles that framed his eyes. He couldn't remember that he had ever felt so hung-over ever since he had graduated from highschool. Deciding that there was definitly still too much blood in his coffee system, he finally headed out of the bathroom for the lounge, only to find two equally lamentable sights in there.  
  
Lieutenant Steve Sloan and intern Dr Alex Martin had the best reasons for looking the way they did. After all the two of them had just made a horrible experience. "Is it me or has that coffee machine never been this loud until today?", groaned the intern, sinking back in one of the chairs while he put two filled mugs onto the table on front of them.  
  
"Just hand some of the stuff over here!", ordered Steve and by that the second the mug was already pushed over to him. He sipped once, twice, then closed his eyes and rubbed one hand over his face.  
  
"Hey!", sounded Jesse's weak voice from the entrance of the lounge. The young doctor made his way to the coffee machine, poured some for himself and settled next to the other men on a chair, sighingly. "How are you?", he inquired. Watching his friends, his doctor-mode had kicked in faster than he could prevent it.  
  
Shortly distracted from his own head, which surely was about as huge as a balloon, Steve shot his friend a sharp glare. "Pardon me?!"  
  
A short gleeful smile hushed over Jesse's face, then he grimaced as he was reminded that smiling hurt. "Uh...forget it. Just kinda job illness...you know". He waved away his remark.  
  
"I see...", replied Steve. "But is there a funnier job than being able to run around with syringes in your hand, tormenting people with stitching them up, not to mention my beloved I'm-a-doctor-speeches..."  
  
"I really hate to destroy your illusions,", Jesse cut in now, "but, you see, that oath I swore makes it kinda boring most of the time." He paused, considering the last point his friend had had which was really good one as he suddenly came to realize cynically. "Though I've gotta admitt that those speeches are really something to live for...."  
  
Both men smiled sarcastically. Those wicked discussions were often a result of them being cranky and not really in the mood of talking anyway. But just sitting around without fooling around was a term that seemed to be unknown to both of them.  
  
"Now what a surprise!", a sudden voice startled the three guys, especially Jesse who recognised it immediatly. Brandon Dawn, hospital administrator and widely known pain in the ass, slowly walked over to them, scrutinisizing each of them with a wryly amused grin. "Dr Travis, you're my man!", he declared with threat in his tone that even Jesse understood clearly.  
  
"Oh oh...", he mumbled sensing trouble behind those words.  
  
"Oh oh doesn't about cover it!", replied Dawn, wearing a cool smile on his lips. "Unless you have a good excuse for skipping the staff meeting, which was by the way three hours ago, again?"  
  
Jesse remained silent, knowing that it was the best he could do. He hadn't really skipped the staff-meeting, though. Simply forgotten it, but he somehow had the feeling that this excuse wouldn't help him out of the misery.  
  
So Dawn waited desparetly for an answer. After a while of gaining silence, he took a deep angry breath and grinned bittersweetly. "Had thought something like that. So then let me give you the information that you're supposed to be at the reception desk in about sixty minutes to welcome your new intern."  
  
"My new what?!"  
  
"Intern...", Dawn repeated calmly and as the doctor's eyes widened in disbelief, he explained furtherly. "You know, I don't get along very well with you and in my opinion you're still far too young to handle a responsibility like leading the ER, nevertheless I've gotta admitt that you are one of the best doctors this hospital has and it would be a shame if I wouldn't let our students participate in your knowledge. So I made the suggestion that you will take care of Dr. Smith' intern. Dr Smith had a surfing accident last week, so..."  
  
"Yeah, spare me the details!", Jesse cut in, being a passionate surfer himself and neither he wanted to be confronted with the nasty injuries that a rock at the wrong place in the water could cause nor he thought he could bear the administrator's voice only a few seconds longer. Otherwise, Jesse was sure, his head would have exploded. "I'm gonna be there in one hour, I promise!", Right now, he had promised everything, only to keep Brandon Dawn from opening his mouth once again.  
  
"I hope so!", closed Dawn the discussion and left the room.  
  
Quietness. Wow. Three men sighed in relief. By now they couldn't even be described as men, more likely they were three walking lacks of sleep with heads that each felt as they'd explode in no time.  
  
Though the sight was truly whelming up tears in her, Dr Amanda Bentley felt that it were tears of plain amusement which she could also witness in Mark Sloan's mischievous grin as they entered the lounge. "See them suffering!", she stated merely, watching the wincing reactions.  
  
The groaning and muffled swears the two of them earned made them smile even more. "That must have been a great night at Bob's!", Mark assumed, surpressing a giggle if only half-heartedly.  
  
"Yeah!", Steve replied sarcastically. "It was terrific...almost no guests which meant loads of beer for us..."  
  
"I think we exaggerated a bit...", mumbled Alex weakly.  
  
"Don't say...", Amanda added, smiling brightly at the three of them.  
  
They bowed their heads and blushed. It was really emberassing. Of course, they hadn't went into the bar with the intention to empty their beer stock, but things had been awfully slow yesterday and after nine o'clock the last guest had left. It had been too early to close up already, but there was nothing else to do anymore, so Alex, Steve and Jesse had just sat together and talked, thereby drinking definitly more than it was good for them as they had realized far too late.  
  
Mark grinned. "Well, actually I was planning to give you a lecture about the damage alcohol can cause, but since you're already suffering from your heads and stomachs..."  
  
"And backs...", Jesse added, noticing too late that he had manoeverd himself into a position which would bring the emberassment to its limits.  
  
Mark and Amanda frowned immediatly, while Steve and Alex, in despite of their headaches broke into resounding laughter.  
  
"Backs?", inquired Mark, slightly concerned, but more than that curious.  
  
Steve giggled. "Jess pulled a great stunt yesterday...", he explained, seeing Jesse burrying his face in his hands.  
  
"Noo!", the young doctor pleaded.  
  
"He's right, that was really cool!", Alex now gave his opinion which was completely unwanted...by Jesse at least.  
  
"I hate you, too, guys!", Jesse mumbled and grimaced while his gaze dropped.  
  
Steve, however, feeling very delighted by his friend's pure emberrassment, had the two excited listeners on his site. "You remember that one Bonanza episode? The one in which Landon, totally drunk, tips over with his chair?"  
  
"You're asking me that?! I must have watched that scene about a million times...your mother used to love it!", Mark laughed out.  
  
Steve pointed at Jesse. "Meet new little Joe!", he announced, grinning broadly.  
  
"Ouch!", Mark commented, feeling sorry for Jesse who not only seemed to suffer from lower back pain but also almost matched the color of a genetically alterned tomato. Nevertheless also the older doctor could hardly fight his sense of good old slapstick humor mixing with his pitying expression.  
  
Hearing them giggling, Jesse made one last attempt to save at least some of his pride. "Thanks for reminding me why I never liked that show..."  
  
"Take it easy", said Alex, between two gigglings, "I've never seen better slapstick before!"  
  
And again the lounge echoed of laughter. Jesse had had enough for one morning. Pain, dizziness and gleeful friends were simply too much for today. So he gulped the remains of his getting cold coffee and got up slowly. "Well, Adam and Hoss, as much as I'd love to stay with you and celebrate the let's-tease-poor-hung-over-doctors-in-charge-day, I think I've gotta go and and see how the wild wild west is doing without me...see ya later, guys!"  
  
By that he was off. The four remaining people watched him leaving and pressed their lips together to make themselves stop laughing finally.  
  
"You think he's mad with us?", Amanda asked, simling wryly though.  
  
Steve shook his head "Naaa...", and messaged his right temple with his index finger. "If he hasn't become angry with us for the last three years, it'd be a weird moment to start with it now..."  
  
The other's agreed with silent nods.  
  
"Talking about it, Adam, have you been looking for anything in particular here? Apart from Aspirin and coffee...", Mark now adressed his own flesh and blood, who, as he presumed, deserved some nicely-meant teasing as well.  
  
Steve was again torn out of his suffering state of a stabbing headache that replayed in a very grim expression on his usually only stern looking face. "Huh? Oh, haha, very funny, indeed, dad!", was the first thing to slip out of his mouth, which was, as he noticed moodly, not really explaining the intention that had lead him here in the first place.  
  
Sensing her chance on some gentle teasing, Amanda used the silence that filled the room while Mark was too busy with smiling at his son in mock waiting calmness.  
  
"Well, the lieutenant was actually requesting an autopsy report, b..."  
  
"That's right, Amanda", he commented with a grateful glance at her, "At least one loyal person left in that hospital..."  
  
"...but I threw him out of the lab because I was worried that he might would have scared the bodies to life with his appereance...", she finished her sentence, her whole face smirking.  
  
His eyes narrowed. "That's so funny, you know!", not even having finished the sentence, he had got up from his chair and moved towards the door. "Well, I'm gonna sit onto my horse and take a ride through the prairie...", he stated, halfly out of the room.  
  
"Hey, lonesome cowboy....Adam!", Mark called after him and watched his son turning around to throw him one of his I'm-gonna-laugh-later-then-looks. When he had earned exactly that, he waved with the file in his hand. "You might wann take your autopsy report with you to the sheriff's office!"  
  
"Oh!", Steve scratched his head and bowed it a little a the same time. Quickly he weaseled back to his father, took the file and made his way across the room again, joined by the faint humming of the Bonanza theme that Mark and Amanda weren't able to surpress in all their gleefullness.  
  
Adam...sorry, Steve fled as fast as he could.  
Michael Potts casted his watch a nervous glance, the millionth in about ten minutes. Together with three other new interns he had been waiting in the entrance hall of the Community General for at least twenty minutes, yet, none of their new supervisors had requested the honour of turning up.  
  
Of course, Michael and the other students had been there far too early in order to prevent being critizised for their inpunctuality, so every minute they had to wait was in fact one minute adding to the about two hours they had been waiting before.  
  
The minutes passed like years and with every second gone Potts stomach became more and more queasy. He drew another heavy breath and watched his friends who seemed to feel equally uneasy, then took in the surroundings again, the long and steril corridors, the medical journals on the tables next to chairs for the waiting people, the nurses that passed them by and who eyed them in stady curious attention. Michael knew that they were checking them over, making a kind of a stocklist in their minds. He wasn't bothered by the thought of that, though. He had already done about the same and come to a satisfying result. He knew that he had already caught their attention. He had played football at high school, therefore he was still rather fit and even through a lot of rough games he had managed to keep his even face, his bright smile, his small straight nose and his brown eyes in an untouched shape.  
  
"Hey, I think they're coming!", suddenly screamed an extremely nervous guy, called Sam Davis, and pointed towards a group of about five or six men, dressed in scrubs who came walking along the corridor. Indeed, they were coming. Chatting and smiling, they headed towards the small group of fidget students, a certain causility in their body language as they came to stand in front of them and started introducing themselves.  
  
Michael suddenly found himself standing next to a considerably smaller man with blond hair and blue eyes who reached out his hand, grinning friendly. "Hi, I'm Dr Travis...", he said, his neck strechting slightly to meet the student face to face. Potts shook the offered hand and scrutinisized the young man who more likely looked like a med student himself, more than he, Michael, did probably.  
  
"Michael Potts...hi!"  
  
Jesse forced himself to make a relaxed and good mooded impression, but currently found that was a hard thing to do if your head was killing you and you hadn't swallowed any pain killers for over an hour. The young student in front of him, who was one hell of inches taller than him, seemed not more, neither less nervous than Jesse had been on his first day here. Puzzeled looks that were casted to him again and again at any ever so small event, slightly sweaty pale skin and a hand running through the hair every second that they weren't needed anywhere else, were some of the clear symptoms for healthy jumpiness of which some students had far too much, others far too less. Both didn't appear to be Michael's problem.  
It was not much later when Jesse had shown Michael around in the ER, advised him how to fill in a chart that others were still able to read it. "Just don't scribble too much, otherwise they're never gonna leave you alone with the charts...", Jesse informed the students, not seeing the nurse who had built up next to him.  
  
"Urm, Dr Travis...I'm looking for a Mrs Moover, you admitted earlier...but she doesn't seem to exist..", she asked shyly.  
  
Jesse frowned and took the chart, she was holding in her hands. "Oh...it's Mrs Hoover, that's an H..."  
  
She raised her eyebrow at him. "Good to know..." Then she walked away, smiling.  
  
Jesse scrachted his head and blushed slightly, while Potts couldn't help but grinning. "I see...", he remarked dryly. If there had been any kind of awe in his eyes before, it had totally vanished by now. The atmosphere of slow going hospital routine was suddenly interrupted by a strechter, being wheeled in fast by two paramedics. Jesse forgot the awkward moment instantly and hurried to the side of the unconscious boy who lay on it. "What have we got?", he asked, inwardly shuddering as he saw the little kid loosing a lot of blood through a huge fracture ond the head.  
  
"Male, about 3 years old, probably broken scull... they're bringing the parents in, too, they are in shock!", informed him one of the paramedics.  
  
Jesse nodded. "Okay, Trauma one. X-ray of the head and spine, just to make sure. Make and EEG and I want a speacialist down here as soon as possible, Dr Germann should be on call...Potts, you take care of the parents together with Nancy!"  
  
"But I wanna hel...", Michael started arguing, but he never came to finish the sentence as Jesse cut in fastly.  
  
"I don't have time arguing with you, got what I said?"  
  
"Yeah...", Michael nodded and saw the resident turning around and rushing into the trauma room.  
  
"How did that happen, anyway?", inquired Jesse, carefully probing the boy's forehead.  
  
"A thrown candlestick hit him...", answered the EMT, not being able to hide the disgust at such a thing in his tone.  
  
"A what?", Jesse almost screamed in disbelieve against the loud noise, not being entirely sure if he had heard wrongly. But he forgot his question by the time he had asked it because of he was distracted by a faint alarming beeping of one of the monitors.  
"You know, is it just me or are you here at any time I pass this part of the hospital?", Dr Amanda Bentley inquired as she found Steve leaning against the reception desk. However, she declared that question as rethorical as she send another one directly after it. "How's your head doing?"  
  
"Stopped hurting once I figured out that I just mustn't watch anything fast- moving...", he informed her, his face only barely lightened compared to some hours earlier when she'd last seen him.  
  
"Uhu...which means you mustn't watch anything that's faster than..."  
  
"Snails", he answered, smiling wryly.  
  
"Lovely", she remarked and then smacked him friendly. "You still haven't told me why you're here."  
  
"Probably because you never gave me a chance...", he replied, kiddingly, but went on before she had had any time to complain. "I'm not here voluntarily, though. After the autopsy report you gave me earlier and the investigations we did pretty much left no doubt that it was suicide we're dealing with, Chief Masters thought that it was nice idea that I attend a refresher course in arresting and reading rights...", Steve mumbled bitterly, still mourning for his lost afternoon off duty.  
  
That was the time, the door of the elevator slid open and Jesse exited, his blue scrubs practically soaked by sweat. Wiping some more water from his forehead, he approached his friends. "Hey!", he greeted them, sighing in exhaust.  
  
"How is the boy?", Steve required, earning a confused glance from his friends.  
  
"Coma...how do you know..."  
  
Steve pointed over to the waiting room, where a man and woman, both in the middle thirties had sunk into two chairs. Jesse recognised them, he had seen them earlier, shortly before he had brought Jimmy, the little boy, into the OR. The couple were Mr and Mrs Harris, the boy's parents. Sitting there, the two didn't talk to each other, not even looked at each other. It was only now that Jesse and Amanda noticed the two officers that stood in the waiting room, hardly making the attempt of being decent in the way they had built up next to the two broken persons.  
  
The doctors casted the lieutenant a questioning glance.  
  
Steve drew a deep breath. "Steve, I'm gonna arrest that father as soon as you have told him how his son is..appearently it was him who threw a candlestick after the kid. Well, actually he threw it after his wife in a fight who happened to have her child in her arms."  
  
Jesse and Amanda gasped for air. "Oh my God..."  
  
Jesse was the first to regain his speech, still he felt slightly nausiatic as he said. "Okay then, let's go..."  
  
He went over to the waiting room, considering what to say as he did so often seconds before he would really have to present the facts to thsoe worried people. Steve followed him, but kept distance because he wanted Jesse to handle the talking.  
  
As Mrs Harris saw the man in scrubs walking towards her, she jumped up, causing the two officers to rush to her side, but Steve simply shook his head and so they let go of her instantly.  
  
"Doktor...how is Jimmy! Please, is he okay?", she demanded to know and also Mr Harris, who had remained in his chair, unmoving, lifted his head.  
  
Jesse bit on his lip. "Your son...", he started slowly, knowing the impact of the following words, "is in a coma. His injuries were very bad..."  
  
"But it's only a matter of time until he wakes up, isn't it?", she asked, directly.  
  
Jesse almost couldn't bring himself to say the words. It seemed as though even the walls were listening to what he had to say. "I'm afraid, no. See, the candlestick broke his scull, we were hardly able to stabelize him, right now, to be honest, it looks very very bad..." Dr Travis had never been a person to lie at people. The extremest thing he was able to was to conceal things and that was, what he did right now. He didn't lose a word about the fact that there was practically no chance left for little Jimmy to wake up again. The machines were keeping him alive, but his brain wasn't able to work anymore. But Jesse sensed that the poor woman had enough to deal with right now.  
  
Indeed, she pressed her hands on her face and started crying bitterly, having to sit down because she was shaking so much. Between her sobs, they could hear her muttering. "What have you done? What the by God have you done?" She was clearly adressing her husband, who now lifted his head.  
  
Mr Harris got up. Slowly, very slowly, he left his chair, standing upright now. He stared at the people who surrounded him, faced each of them once, the two officers and Steve, who had moved away a bit, his wife and Jesse at last. "Nothing...", he mumbled absent-mindedly. "I haven't done anything."  
  
He focussed on the young doctor, his expression suddenly becoming furious. Faster than anyone could see it happening, he had a grib on Jesse's shirt and shook him hard. "You're lying!", he screamed. "I didn't do anything to my son. I love my son!"  
  
Jesse was too shocked to even be able to defend himself. He simply could feel how the man's fingers dig into the textil of his shirts, tightening it so much that he was barely able to breath. Still choking for air the grib loosened as fast as he had felt it on his collarbone, instead a violent push now sent him flying threw the whole room, he was only stopped by the wall that his back hit finally. Groaning at the sharp pain that shot through his spine that made him unable to get back to his feet, Jesse instinctively cowered to protect himself from any more brutality giving vent on him.  
  
However, there wasn't more to come. Mr Harris had been caught by the guards who, after their first seconds of surprise, seemed to have found out what they were actually there for. For the two of them it was not a hard thing to do.  
  
"You're lying!", it still sounded through the corridors, every angonized scream followed by a "Tom, please, stop that!" Mrs Harris was now crying so heavily that she wasn't even able to speak anymore.  
  
Also Steve had been totally caught by surprise at the sudden violent out- break, that he could only react when his friend had already ended up lying on the floor. The only thing he could do was to obstruct Harris from approaching Jesse once more and force him into the guards arms, who handcuffed Harris and took him in custody.  
  
In the meanwhile also Amanda, who had witnessed the ordeal in plain shock, had reached the waiting room and crouched down next to Jesse, whose first two attempts to sit up himself had failed since he was still seeing stars.  
  
"Jess, are you alright? Look at me...", she gently helped him sit up and put her palms on his cheeks to make him gaze at her. "Can you see me? Are you in pain?", she inquired worriedly, while he, though still feeling dizzy and his heart racing, already tried to writh out of her firm grib. Finally she let at least go of his face, but still didn't allow him to get up .  
  
"I'm okay...really...ouch...", he flinched slightly as he moved, struggeling to free from her and stand up.  
  
"You're stating the obvious, pal!", Steve joked half-heartedly as he bent down next to Jesse, softly patting his friend's shoulder.  
  
Jesse chuckled wryly, but grew earnest again as he watched the still sobbing Mrs Harris being lead away by a nurse and the handcuffed Mr Harris being dragged away by the guards into the opposite direction.  
  
Steve meant to see some kind of fear in his buddy's eyes as his gaze followed his attacker. "Don't worry, Jess. That man won't see the light of day too soon again!"  
  
Jesse nodded remorsefully. "I still feel sorry for him!" 


	3. Chapter 2

I'm very well aware of the fact you all hate me. But please: First read, then review, then start throwing your stuff after me. At the bottom you'll find an Author's Note with a honest apologize for the state of the story. Just thought that after this delay, you may rather want to read on than being bored with my excuses. Thanks for all the reviews I got for the first two chapters, I'm sorry that I disappointed your expectations.

********

Once again checking over the functions of the machines that kept the little boy alive, Jesse sighed in frustration. There was physically no way that Jimmy would ever regain concussioness. The young doctor's gaze wandered over the limb form in the bed, then dropped for a second, and focussing on the ground Jesse left the room and shut the door. Outside he threw another quick glance through the window, before he lowered his head to fill out the chart. But he simply wasn't able to concentrate on the paper work. The thoughts of the young boy whose life had been in his hands were still continuing to keep his mind busy. The boy whose life he had rescued physically, but with what kind of result? 

It had been all for nothing. Secretly Jesse couldn't help but feeling that he would have spared a lot of people lots of pain if he had ended up all this when there was still a chance to do it. Before all this had turned into that long endless sleep which it was only medical because sleep usually is interrupted by waking up. But not in this case. In Jimmy's case there was only one way out of the sleep. Death.

"Jesse Travis, are you listening to me?", a well-known voice inquired and caused Jesse to jump about one feet into the air. He whirled around only to face Mark who seemed to have been standing next to him for quite a while without being noticed by him.

"Woah, Mark, it's you...", he said, sounding puzzled.

Mark frowned. "It's been me for the whole past minute. Haven't you heard me?" He scutinisized his friend, concernedly.

"Well...urm...no...", Jesse admitted, blushing. "I was thinking..."

Mark's look immediatly lost its confusion while it took on a much softer, yet also more worried expression. His head swayed to the door of the room Jesse had just exited. "Of Jimmy Harris?"

The younger man nodded his head. "Yeah...I dunno...I just wish..."

Guessing to know what Jesse was so eager about, Mark put an assuring hand on his best friend's shoulder. "You did everything you could to keep him alive..."

Jesse nodded his head in sad realization. "Yeah...I just wish I hadn't...I could've brought this to an end..." By the time the words had left his mouth Jesse found that he had fully counted with the derogating look that he earned from his mentor's normally so understanding and calm expression.

Mark gasped in disbelief. He simply wasn't sure if he could trust his ears. "Jesse...", he mumbled, only slowly becoming aware of the horror he felt. However, he tried to regain his speech, no matter how awkward he suddenly felt towards the man he had always thought he would know like a son. "You don't mean that...I know, you don't..."

By the time he said so, Mark got a grib on Jesse's arm which, as the younger doctor noticed, was more intense, almost threatening compared to all of Mark's gestures towards him before this. "You have no idea..." Those words hit the young doctor like a baseball bat. Not only that he was scared of Mark more than ever he could remember, he also couldn't recall his friend ever being so quick-judging.

He had thought that, if anyone would understand how he was feeling right now, it would be Mark. Disappointment suddenly rose in him, at the same time he cursed himself for ever revealing his thoughts to Mark. He had his friend's opinion now. He had no idea. With a fast movement Jesse tore away from his friend's hand, bringing himself into a secure distance, a gesture that had something of a difficult child to the older doctor who only slowly considered how harsh he had sounded.

As they had the trait of character to interrupt any kind of friendly discussion or a bad quarrel, a pager also now went off to disturb that awkward scene between the two doctors, the two friends, who simply stared at each other, both facing a certain icyness they didn't know and didn't like in each other's expressions. 

Jesse switched off his pager, murmured a dismissing:"Excuse me!", and headed for the ER, and Mark, if he wanted or not, had to let him pass, watching his friend's back in quiet horror. Looking back, he understood his own reaction even less than he did Jesse's. By the time he had seen that honesty in his protégé's eyes, that acknowledged his interpretation of Jesse's words, something inside him had simply snapped.

However, Mark felt that he had badly over-reacted. He would apologize to his friend when he was back from the ER. 

Stomping into the ER, Dr Travis was near something that wasn't rage, yet an unflattering mix of confusion, depression and nervousity. He had told Mark all this because he had thought that he would understand. Jesse hadn't expected anyone to approve this, in any other case he probably wouldn't have himself, nevertheless he had believed Mark would listen to him. And that was, as Jesse suddenly realized, the one thing that had scared him mostly. That Mark hadn't even made an attempt of understanding, his reaction, that way he had looked at Jesse had been just resolut and final. 

Jesse inwardly smiled sarcastically. Thereby it had only been a thought, spoken out. No deed, no intention had been behind it, apart from maybe the intention to let out some frustration that the young doctor had been aware of ever since the moment Mr Harris glare had stroke him first. 

"What have we got?", he asked his routine questions, still being completely absent-minded.

"Male, white, early sixties, broke down on the street...", the EMT answered, noticing the doctor's mental absense, nevertheless he was too tired himself to be surprised by that.

Wheeling the patient into the trauma room, Jesse threw a quick glance at his patient, gave some half-hearted commands to the nurses, while his mind mechanically ruled out everything that could be helpful for the right diagnosis. Food poisoning? Heart attack? _You have no idea... _Stroke? Infection? _You have no idea... _Heat shock? Simple exhaustion? _You have no idea..._

The more Jesse wanted to forget this argument with Mark, the more he told himself that it had only been a stupid misunderstanding, the less he believed he was right. There was more behind it, more behind Mark's reaction that he wasn't able to understand. And being honest to himself he hadn't given much of an effort to understand. He had only wanted to be understood. 

"You could at least say 'hello', Jesse!", said a weak, somewhat sadly amused voice next him. At first Jesse didn't know where it came from, when he heard his name, he was not too sure if it had really been there or just in his head. But his confusion didn't keep him from looking around searchingly. His gaze came to a hold on the man on the stretcher who seemed to have watched him all the time Jesse had been lost in his thoughts.

The young doctor gasped for air. "Phillip?!", it slipped out of him while his eyes widened slowly. It was unbelievable. That man before him was Dr Phillip Morton, once Head of the ER at the Minnesota County Hospital, the man who had once been his teacher, the man who had...killed his own daughter. Not even noticing he did so, Jesse closed his eyes for a moment, listening to his pulse. What was it after all those years that made him nervous about this man, more than nervous, Phillip still scared him as he had then.

Thereby he didn't look like someone to be scared of. He was a fragile person with also transparent pale skin, thin, smaller than Jesse remembered him. He had aged, indeed, seemingly it had been twenty years within ten. That was why his former student hadn't recognized him. Phil didn't have much of his former physical self left. Mentally though, he was still the calm, distanced person he had been ever since. "Right, it's me." He raised his eyebrows at Jesse and smiled wryly. "There is a proverb, saying that men always meet twice in life...I'm slowly getting the meaning of it..."

"Yeah...", Jesse replied reservedly and turned around to the nurse. "Okay, I want a blood analysis, a catscan and..."

"You can spare yourself and your staff the whole circus. I will tell you what it is...", Phillip murmured grumpily.

Jesse hesitated for a moment before he closed the chart and stuck his pen back into the pocket of his white jacket. Then he stepped closer to the stretcher, careful to keep distance, but near enough that no one else apart from Morton could hear him. "It's Leukemia, isn't it?", he asked earnestly.

Phillip nodded. "Late stage...too late, I guess...", he added quietly.

Jesse understood that this was all that had to be said. An oh so powerful disease had found another victim. 

The younger doctor turned away from his patient and talked the nurse behind him in undertone. Then he turned back to his patient and smiled forcedly at him before he left the room.

Heading back to the reception desk, a shudder ran down Jesse's spine. He had never acted like that before. He hadn't acted like himself. He hadn't acted like the doctor he wanted to be and usually was. When the hell had everything started to work against him. 'When have I started to hate myself for what I do', Jesse asked himself. For now he shouldn't get an answer since a look at his chart reminded him of something else that would only let grow the mispleasure he felt now, he knew that. 

"Hey Doc!", Potts greeted him, smiling friendly.

Jesse looked up and smiled back, again it seemed forced. "Hey, Mike...how was lunch?"

Michael waved it away with one gesture. "You're really asking me that?! Have you ever eaten in that cantine?!"

Jesse chuckled. "Okay, I know what you mean...listen, you talked to Mrs Harris, the li'l boy's mother earlier, didn't you?"

Michael acknowledged that. "Yeah, kinda...you know, she cried mostly. Poor woman..."

"I need to talk to her. Maybe it would be good if you joined me, I mean, she knows you..."

"Okay, no prob..."

"Then let's go..." 

They found Mrs Harris in front of her son's ICU room, where she stood her head leaned against the window and stared at Jimmy's limp form in the bed. Her face was covered with tears, the water sparkled on her skin and was reflected by the glass of the window. The two doctors approached her from the side and she only noticed them when they came to a hold directly in front of her. 

Only reluctantly she tore her gaze away from her child to face the two men in scrubs and white coats. "Hello", she mumbled and bowed her head when she said, "I'm sorry, I can't remember your names."

Jesse gave her a pitiful look and shook his head. "Never mind, Mrs Harris. I'm Dr Travis and this is Michael Potts, an intern here. Mrs Harris, I really don't want to bother you, but we need to talk to you about an important matter..."

She nodded immediatly. "Oh, I need to talk to you, too, Doctor...please..."

Jesse shrugged, not really knowing what was expecting him, but he was willing to listen. The young woman –she was even younger than Jesse, not quite still matching Michaels age though- took a deep breath and used the back of her right hand to wipe the tears out of her face. "I...I...", she started off and paused again. "Oh, my God, this is so hard...I'm sorry..."

Michael felt that he should say something. He had seen her crying earlier and felt great pity for her. "You don't have to be sorry. We understand that this is hard for you..."

She swallowed and looked at the two of them. "Dr Travis...I want to apologize that my husband became so brutal. I mean, you rescued my son, I'm so grateful for that...I...I...I don't know how to thank you..."

Jesse didn't answer and felt simply guilty. He hadn't rescued that boy. All he had done was to make all this even worse than it had been already. He had done what he had to do. He had done no harm. And there it was again, that question. 'When have I started to hate all this?'

Mrs Harris sobbed quietly and turned back to the window, watching Jimmy through it. "He looks so peaceful...as though he is sleeping...he is going to wake up again, isn't he?..."

Jesse took a deep breath. "Maybe we should have a seat", he suggested while leading the girl to a group of waiting chairs where they both sat down while Michael stayed standing. "Missus Harris, I...", now it was up to Jesse to stutter. "Unfortunately I have to tell you that at the moment the machines are keeping your son alive. And right now I can tell you for sure that the chances that Jimmy may wake up again..."

Her eyes had followed his words floading into the room, passing by, they had caught each of them, held fast to them. 

"...are practically zero..." 

She stared at him, plainly, her gaze saying more than thousands of words. Neither Jesse nor Michael knew what to do or say. There wasn't a medical prescription for that. "No...", Mrs Harris mumbled, massaging her fingers somewhat intensly. "No, this can't be true..."

Jesse moisted his lips, he still had the most important thing to sort out. "Mrs Harris....I know that must be horrible for you, but consindering things as they are now, I have to ask you that. Since you are Jimmy's mother it's your decision wether we should stop the machines or not..."

She winced. "My decision? You want me to tell you if my son should die or not...", the horror was clearly evident in her eyes. 

Jesse nodded. "I'm sorry, yes, I need to ask you that. No matter what you tell me, I will do what you want. But please take your time to dec...."

'Decide' he had wanted to say, but Jimmy's mother had interrupted him already with a firm "No!"

"Sorry?"

She shook his head. "Jimmy isn't going to die! I want you to keep him alive. No matter what, okay? My son is going to live!"

Jesse closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again, he saw in quiet shock how Michael's fingers had clenched so tightly that the knuckles were already white. "Lady...", the intern said determinedly, "Are you sure? I mean, do you really want to put your son through more angony? You heard what Dr Travis said, so why do you want to put Jimmy through this? How can you be so darn selfish!?", he exclaimed, furiousity taking the better part of him that the resident had problems to keep him calm.

"Michael! Stop that!", commanded Jesse, shooting the younger man a sharp glare. "It's her decision!", he added through gritted teeth. Michael shrugged angrily, the turned around on his heel and went away.

Jesse looked to Mrs Harris apologetically. "I'm sorry...", he stated, biting on his lips when he saw her tears flowding again. That was all the support he could give and he knew that the woman probably sensed that he didn't like that decision either. But what kind of a choice did he have than to accept it?

*********

The syringe felt cold between his fingers, even through the rubber gloves he could feel the astonishing impact of the little viole. The strength to kill. To release. He knew it was risky, but it somehow didn't feel wrong to him. Not even when he injected to morphine into the drip.

The sound of the flatline made him smile. It was better this way, that was for sure. But now he had to hurry to not to get caught. It was truly good feeling, but it wasn't worth to be charged for it.

**********

Amanda swallowed hard when the door of the pathology lab opened a crack. In a few moments it would open entirely, but that was at least enough time for her to prepare for this certainly uncomfortable conversation.

In the meantime, Jesse had made sure that Amanda was where he had supposed her to be and had entered the lab, after shortly peering into it first. "Hey, you wanted to talk to me?", he asked, hardly surpressing a yawn, his way to tell her that whatever it was, she should come to terms quickly, otherwise he would fall asleep while standing in front of her desk. As often Jesse hadn't got much sleep during his night shift and he was now dead tired.

"You know, that one of your patients died tonight...Jimmy Harris...I'm sorry, Jess..."

He nodded remorsefully. "Yeah, me too. Flatline around eleven o'clock. We tried to stabalize him, but it was too late...seems as though the injury was worse than I've thought, probably this was going to happen sooner or later anyway...", he thought out loud, but didn't dare to tell Amanda that he thought that it maybe was the best this way. He still hadn't talked to Mark about yesterday.

Amanda run one hand over her face, then looked at him, careful not to drop her gaze, but focussing his eyes instead while she handed him a file. "The autopsy report....Jimmy died of an overdose of morphine..."

Jesse read through the front paper of the file in disbelief before he could face Amanda. "What does that mean? That...that...that someone murdered him?", he asked, unsure of his own ability to jugde the situation.

She nodded. "Yeah, it looks like that..." She told the truth.

He shook his head in pure shock. "But who would...who could..."

"I'm afraid that this is not your biggest problem now....", she murmured carefully.

Jesse frowned. "How do you mean that?"

Amanda took a deep breath. "Jesse, there is note on Jimmy's chart that gives evidence who was the last person that admistered any medications. That was signed by you...", she trailed off, when she saw him gasping.

"You...you think I've got anything to do with it?!", he stammered.

"No, of course not! But there will be an investigation and it's very likely that they will use this chart as a proof. You were the doctor in charge and they'll maybe assume that it was a mistake of yours or..."

Meeting his eyes, she saw his lips forming the word that she hadn't wanted to speak out. "Euthanasia...", Jesse said quietly. That couldn't be true. He wouldn't kill anyone. Never. No matter for what. 

Amanda had put a reassuring hand on his arm. "Don't worry, Jesse!", she gently rubbed her hand over his shoulder. "We all know that you wouldn't do something like that. You're a good doctor and we will find another explanation for that. As soon as can I will talk to Mark..."

"Mark...", Jesse repeated dumb-foundedly. Scraps of his argument with his mentor popped up in his mind. Oh damnit!

"Mark is going to help you, Jess!!", Amanda told him, but he didn't appear to listen. All of sudden he tore away from her, as though he was fearing something. However, Amanda misinterpreted his reaction. She couldn't know what had happened between her two colleagues and friends yesterday.

"Excuse me...", Jesse mumbled and quickly made his way to the door.

"You know he is going to believe you!", Amanda cried after him, but he had already closed the door with a bump.

Outside Jesse leaned against the wall, his friend's last words still on his mind. He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself not to start crying. "I wouldn't be too sure...", he mumbled in despair. 

*******

Author's Note: Well, so after this huuuuuuuuuuge delay, I'm back and this is not the last chapter, in fact I finished the story and have all chapters ready for posting. I'm really really sorry for vanishing in the underground just like that with a started story left behind. I normally wouldn't do that. But after it took me ages to get the third chappy written, I figured that it was maybe better to first finish the story and then post it in a row which I will do now. I'm really grateful for your patience and in case you're still willing to give it, I would appreciate your feedback. I promise that will never happen again. Again I can't do more but ask you for forgiveness and beg you to read on and let me know what you think!

Bye, Geo


	4. Chapter 3

Hey folks!! Argh, delay again, thanks to PC and family outings (-4°...yeah, guys, it's winter in Germany...we're all happy, are we?). Dunno, my computer has the interesting habit to throw me outta the net after five minutes which makes posting a bit...complicated. After Christmas everything will get better *smirks*...

Anyways, thanks so so so so so so so so much for not killing me after my lame start, I appreciate and hope that you still enjoy the story, I promise, it'll be coming up speed from now. Also THANK YOU for looking over my mistakes...I've got a spelling/grammar program, but I'm slowly getting the feeling that its English is even worse than mine. Actually it takes more time to re-read than to write the stuff (once I get it written), and I still miss mistakes. It's depressing, all I can do is still beg you for patience. I'm going to America in January...maybe I'm gonna learn how to communicate there...

******

As Mark took his second sip from the first coffee in the lounge this day, he all of sudden became aware of the approaching man in straight black suit with a tightly knotted tie, who carried an expensive brown leather attachè case through the corridors. By the time he had reached the door of the lounge, Mark had already figured the unknown person's job, without that it had taken him a lot of guesses. He could smell laywers wherever they appeared.

"Dr Sloan?", asked the the correctly dressed man in the door frame and Mark nodded wearily. Actually he was not in the mood for answering any kinds of questions. But again he was amazed how fast news travelled. Not even three hours had passed since Amanda had reported the real cause of Jimmy Harris' death, and even though Mark had been the first one to know besides the medical commission it seemed as if almost at the same second the invasion of the men in black had begun.

"My name is Walter Day, I'm appointed by the medical commission to find out what exactly are the circumstances of Jimmy Harris' death. I'm sure that I don't have to explain to you the role that your colleague Dr Travis plays in our investigation..."

Mark rolled his eyes. He hated this arrogant tone. "No, I think I know what you're talking about...", he murmured, forcing himself to sound friendly.

Mr Day nodded satisfiedly as though happy that his guess had been right. "May I ask you a few questions about him?"

Mark looked up grimly, letting the man know that he wasn't pleased by the thought of an interrogation. "I believe Dr Travis would prefer to answer those questions himself first. Don't you think that's only fair?", he asked back.

Walter Day raised his eye brows. "Of course, I understand your concerns Dr Sloan, but in those cases I always like to know what exactly I am dealing with."

The older doctor frowned, not only at the posh lawyer lines which he hated so much. "What do you mean by 'those cases'?", he questioned, somewhat suspiciously. 

Throughout their whole dialog the lawyer had remained standing and hadn't even made an effort to meet Mark's eyes. Even now he didn't focuss the doctor's face, but continued staring anywhere and nowhere at the same time. He waited a while until he gave an answer to that question, but he didn't make the impression to have thought about what he should say. "You know, doctor. I dealt with lots of those cases and I usually found out that they weren't any medical mistakes. It's mostly purpose. Some do it because they are too emotional, some are simply selfish and can't stand the sight of suffering people, sometimes there is family involved. And some even consider themselves as a kind of angel of mercy or so, that's why they do it...."

Mark didn't know if he was really understanding. "Do what?", he asked impatiently and now the Mr Day's look suddenly pointed on him.

The lawyer shrugged, almost indifferently. "Euthanasia...", he said.

Mark's eyes widened in shock. "Beg your pardon?! You are not here to tell me that you think that Dr Travis did..."

"Yes, that's exactly why I am here!", Walter Day cut in, sort of unfriendly now. "May I ask you some questions now, please?"

Mark heavily shook his head. "No way! What you are guessing is completely insane and I am not going to play such a stupid game with you", he said firmly, indicating Mr Day that he'd better be out of the room soon.

But young Mr Day still had something to say, he hadn't liftet his gaze from Mark so far. "You call it insane, Dr Sloan. Well, I wish I'd have such an undoubting attitude as you. Do you know yourself so well? Are you such a great naive doctor that you can't even consider the possibily that your friend was able to do something like that?...You must be a good friend Dr Sloan..." With these last questions Walter Day had left without waiting for the answers. Mark hadn't given any answers.

There were not even seconds between Day's leaving and the voice that startled Mark. 

"You have doubts, haven't you?", asked someone, leaning in the door frame.

Mark almost jumped. "Jesse!", he cried out when he saw his friend coming towards him. The younger man looked more vulnarable than usual, his glance was flickering and weary, his motions seemed less agitated, yet there was another awkward expression about him that his friend couldn't recognize. It wasn't anger, neither it was guilt. Mark wasn't sure. Instead of answering he had a question himself. "How long have you been listening?"

Jesse slumped into the couch and shrugged. "Long enough to know that the witch hunt has begun. Get your forks out, folks, but be cautious that no one will transform you into frogs...", he mumbled bitterly.

In despite that he had been thinking something similar a few seconds ago, Mark shook his head. "You're exaggerating, Jess! No one's accusing you!"

"No, not yet!", Jesse laughed out sarcastically, but grew instantly earnest again. "You haven't seen those guys out there, Mark!" He changed his voice into posher one, imitating Mr Day's tone. "They indeed have their doubts...including you!"

"You're talking crazy! I know you wouldn't even think of something like that...", Mark replied, raising his voice a little to get through to his friend's sensible mind. In the meantime, he was sure to have realized what it was that had changed in Jesse's expressions. It was contrariness. And by now Mark even realized it wasn't the first time he saw it. Yesterday he had also seen it as Jesse had pulled away from him. The older doctor suddenly froze, thinking of the argument the day before. Since then there had been something wrong and now he was slowly able to figure out what. He had doubts. He didn't even know why, but there was this uneasy feeling inside of him that he wasn't sure. And that truly scared the hell out of him.

Jesse's head sunk onto his shivering hands. He had known it and he could see it in Mark's eyes. There was kindness and friendship, but there was also a spark of doubt of which Jesse had hoped so much that he wouldn't find it there. 

"Jesse!", Mark said loudly. "Jesse, look at me! You wouldn't think of doing that?" Then out of a sudden impulse he felt the urge to ask furtherly. "Or would you?" Unsettlement packed him, shook him, just didn't let him off the hook.

"You really don't believe me...", the younger man stated merely, seemingly unmoved.

"Would you think of doing that?", Mark heard himself asking. He couldn't stop himself from seeking acknowledgement, he acted faster than he could react, his tongue revealing his doubts faster to the world outside than his mind could reveal it to himself. "Would you, Jesse?"

The younger doctor looked up as though he was awakened from a dream. "Please don't ask me that...", he said with a raspy voice, more choking than speaking actually. It was the last thing he told Mark before he left.

********

In the Los Angeles Police Departement there was still no change in the game that had been played in the interrogation room for hours. Steve halfly leaned, halfly sat on the edge of the table, not letting his focus off of Mr Harris. Mr Harris was handcuffed to prevent him from attacking anyone, but his hands lay loosely on the plate anyway. Steve had no intention to open the cuffs. He was too angry.

The uncomfortability that was displayed in Harris' otherwise cool gaze, showed that he could pratically feel the lieutenant's sharply watching glance bouncing on him. However, he wouldn't speak.

Steve took a sip from his coffee. "Mr Harris", he started out, his voice tensed. "You won't make it any better this way. We know what happened. I know it, you know it and I'm sure that everybody in this town, who's bought the LA Times today, also knows it. So why won't you spare us a lot of trouble, the goverment a lot of money and the press a lot of digging, of which I'm sure that neither you nor your family would appreciate it, and just make a confession."

This would be his last attempt Steve had sworn to himself. If Harris didn't talk now, he would have someone else deal with it. The lieutenant himself would have preferred to beat it out of this bastard, the confession that he'd thrown a candlestick after his wife and thereby "accidently" hurt his kid, but then Steve figured that that wasn't quite the right way. The arrested man did nothing apart from staring stoicly at the door. As he moved his lips, he only announced:"I won't say anything until my lawyer has arrived here!"

That was the moment the door was opened from the outside and a guard let in a man in gray suit, the beige of his tie only about matching the color of his dressing clothes. Everything about this guy seemed to be gray as Steve noticed. His hair was gray, his brief case was gray, even the color of his eyes was more gray than blue. When he marched in, the man grinned confidently at Mr Harris. "I guess that you are Mr Harris' lawyer..." Steve stated the obvious and looked grimly at the two smiling men. He had never liked lawyers.

"Indeed, Lt. Sloan, indeed...I am James Barlow...", the gray man introduced himself.

Steve's eyes grew wide for a second. "James Barlow? The James Barlow?" '_Oh great'_, he thought. Barlow wasn't only a lawyer. He was one of the best lawyers.

James Barlow laughed out, however, it sounded somewhat ridiculing. "Yeah, the James Barlow. I figure that you've heard of me..."

Steve shrugged. "If someone claims on a national radio show that Nixon could still be president in case he would have had you as a lawyer, there won't pass five minutes until everyone has heard it..."

"Yeah, Watergate would have been a child's play then...", Barlow retorted self-confidently, but Steve remained unimpressed.

"I see that modesty isn't a hobby of yours...", the lieutenant remarked dryly. "Now would you please tell your client to finally confess what everybody knows anyway by now?"

"I am actually here to tell my client that he is released on bail...", the lawyer announced and twinkled in the direction of Harris.

Steve gasped. "What?! That's impossible, I have witnesses..."

"You have only one witness to be exact. And unfortunately Mrs Harris isn't in the psychological state to give any kind of evidence that Mr Harris can be charged for physical abuse of his child or anybody else. After all her son died this morning..."

"What?!", it was now Mr Harris turn to exclaim in shock. He had jumped from his chair, but almost lost balance as he still was handcuffed.

Barlow patted his client's shoulder gently. "I know this must be horrible for you, Mr Harris. But it may be good for you to know that there is already an investigation running against the doctor in charge."

"That little bastard...", mumbled Harris, his nostrils were shaking.

Steve took a deep breath. He knew who the doctor in charge was. It took him some seconds to realize that James Barlow held Harris' arms accusingly towards him. "Now, lieutenant Sloan, would you please finally free my client. There is nothing that keeps him here..." 

Reluctantly Steve pulled out the keys and opened the handcuffs. He had no choice, but he made a mental note to call the CGH as soon as he would get out of here, and ask what was going on. 

Rubbing his wrists, Harris's gratefully glanced at his lawyer. Barlow raised one eyebrow, then sneered at Steve. Before heading off, he turned around once and said calmly: "You know, Lieutenant, modesty is something mediocre. And, as Madonna once said:'It's pure waste of time to do something mediocre...'"

Waving a good-bye, Mr Harris and James Barlow left the interrogation room.

*********

With the painkillers inside his system the world outside, momentarily consisting of his hospital room, seemed like a huge bubble to Phillip Morton, who struggled to move his head when the door opened quietly. During his rounds Jesse hadn't met a lot of friendly faces and he wasn't sure what exactly expected him in this room. He had entered with mixed feelings. Morton smiled weakly as he finally came to recognize the young man. "Hey...", he coughed. "Hiding from them?"

Jesse's heart sank rapidly. Also Morton knew it. "News travel fast...", he simply answered, but at the same time nodded his head. He looked around, confusedly. He neither wanted to be in this room, nor outside. But he pushed away that thought. "How are you feeling?", he inquired instead, somehow sensing the irony behind it.

"I think we both know very well how I am, question is, how are you?", Phillip replied.

Jesse shrugged. "Everybody seems to be scared of me..."

"Are they right?"

He shook his head, smiling bitterly. "No, they aren't. "

"What's your problem then?"

Jesse rolled his eyes. "Isn't that obvious? They think that I'm a killer, that's my problem... I didn't murder anyone. I'm not like...like..." He trailed off, realizing what he was about to say.

Phillip smiled. "You are not like me. Is that what you wanted to say?" Jesse didn't answer. Of course, Phillip was right. His former teacher went on. "You are right, Jesse, you are not like me. You have to keep that in mind."

There was a knock on the door, but neither Phil nor Jesse paid attention to it. Jesse simply stared at Morton, who still wasn't finished. "It's no crime to lose faith in what you do. Everybody does that from time to time. You only have to regain it..."

There had been a second unheard knock on the door, then someone just rushed into the room. Jesse cried out in pain, as he was completely taken by surprise, when a tall security guard grabbed his wrists and twisted Jesse's arms on the back. The strong fingers bored into the flesh of his arms that he felt his blood pounding in them as it was trying to make its way to his hands. His shoulders hurt so much that his whole body was paralysed, but he guessed that this was the guard's intention.

Walter Day and Brandon Dawn ran into the room and build up in front of the doctor who had been dragged away from the hospital bed as far as possible. Jesse was still struggeling against the tightness around his hands, but he realized that the two men seemed to demand his attention and the sooner they'd get it, the faster his arms would probably be free again.

Brandon Dawn looked excusingly at the man in the bed. "Has he been trying to do anything to you?", he asked and frowned almost disappointedly as Phillip shook his head. "No...we were only chatting..."

"What's going on?", Jesse managed to say between two gasps. He felt how his hands became numb.

Walter Day scrutinized Jesse sternly. "Dr Travis, as long as the investigation concerning you lasts, I recommend to you that you'd better keep away from the patients..." A cruel smile flickered over his face. "We don't want anybody to get hurt."

"But, you can't..."

"Dr Travis!", Dawn cut in strictly. "You can make your choice. If you walk out yourself, you will spare all of us, including you, the effort and the emberassment to make you walk!" 

*********

Jesse fumbled the keys out of his pocket and unlocked the apartement door. He had made his decision. He had walked out himself. As he pulled the key out of the lock when entering, he could see the red marks around his wrists, the prints of the guard's fingers were nearly visible on his skin.

He closed the door behind himself and leaned against it, slowly letting himself sink down along the wooden plate until he sat on the floor, his knees drawn to his chest. He couldn't imagine that it was much worse being a killer than everybody treating you as though you were one. Everyone seemed to be hysterical, when had they started to be? 

He wouldn't sit on the ground for ages. Somewhen he pushed himself up, and went over to his bed room door. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to forget, only forget what was happening and why it was happening. When Jesse walked into the bedroom, a shudder ran down his spine. At first he didn't know what had caused it until he saw that the window was widely open. He frowned. He hadn't opened it. Neither before he had left, nor in the night before. No one in Venice was crazy enough to leave his bedroom window open while he was sleeping or not at home.

As he went to close the window, Jesse threw a quick glance around. Nothing was messed up or missing. And outside in the darkness there wasn't anybody to be seen. Still watching the black night in front of him, Jesse all of sudden became aware of an image that seemed to be reflected by the pane.

There was his own image and behind it there was...by the time he had realized that someone had sneaked up behind him, the young man had no chance to turn around quickly enough. He felt two fingers wrapping around his neck and being pressed into his collar bone, not even seconds later a pain shot through his body, so overwhleming that he couldn't even scream. 

Harrs had been waiting behind the open bedroom door, unseen by Jesse who had directly headed for the window. The doctor couldn't have noticed anything until the time the other man's large thumb dug into his flesh.

Feeling how the hurt slowly took his conciousness, Jesse was now pretty sure that he could recognize the face that looked at him from the window pane. And by the time he was was already on his knees, struggling to breath, he knew it was Mr Harris. From the very first second he'd seen him, he had known it wouldn't be the last time.

The strong painful grip forced him onto the floor, even groaning was impossible. Mr Harris waited another few moments in caution, then smiled to himself. Dr Travis lay motionlessly on the ground, hardly breathing. And hardly was still too much. 


	5. Chapter 4

Errrr, well, okay, so 'somewhen' doesn't exist? Hm...see, my excellent grammar/spelling program had no complaints 'bout it...guess I should have my dad install a new one...*g*

Anyways, glad that you still like the story and that you look so kindly over my mistakes. I'm already curious what you'll find this time. ;) Thanks for the reviews and well, enjoy!

Author's note: This chapter makes references to the DM episodes "Today is the Last Day of the Rest of my Life" and "Alienated". You don't need to know the eppis to understand the story, but it won't hurt either if you do.

***********

"You did what?!", Mark Sloan stared in wide-eyed horror at Brandon Dawn who stood next to him at the reception desk.

"It seemed to me as the most decent way to prevent any bad publicity during the current investigations...", Dawn repeated his statement. The calmness in his voice let grow Mark's disbelieve at the revealed news even more.

The doctor frowned, his disgusted look first meeting the administerator, then the nearby standing lawyer Mr Day. "It seemed as a decent solution to expell one of our most talented doctors?", he asked, glaring at both men while a strange feeling continued to crawl up his stomach. What had been there earlier that had infected his mind with doubts about Jesse's medical integrity, had now turned into a wave of anger mostly against himself. What kind of a friend was he that he hadn't been able to believe his friend when his judgement was needed most? What the hell had ridden him?

"Dr Sloan, you know the press is very eager about getting stuff like that on top of their headlines. We can't afford a scandal like this...", Brandon Dawn gave the attempt of an explanation, supported by his lawyer's reassuring nods.

"Oh shut up!", Mark icy voice cut through the air like a knife. As a matter of fact he didn't care about the loss of his more or less neutral tone. Somehow, he knew, he had to make it up with Jesse. And this was the least he could do. He threw Walter Day a reproachful look. "It was your idea, Mr Day, wasn't it?!"

Walter Day was in no hurry to answer. "Well, at the momentary state of facts I indeed recommended to Mr Dawn..."

"You 'recommended'?!", Mark almost exploded. "How dare you, you don't even have proofs!"

"Since you refused to talk to me doctor Sloan, I didn't have much of a choice", retorted Day, probably sensing what kind of effect that'd take.

For now Mark knew that it was pointless to contradict. He had refused to talk because he had guessed that Day would turn around his words when they were still inside is mouth. "I wasn't talking about opinions. I was talking about evidence, witnesses..."

At the confused look Mr Day threw him, Dawn started to explain:"You know, Dr Sloan's son is a police lieutenant, therefore..."

Day smiled smoothly. "Oh, I see...we are little criminologists..."

Mark remained cool. "I don't know what you are, Mr Day, I simply want to make sure that there won't be any injustice committed just to give you a comfortable place to sit on a pure theory..."

"Well, as far as I know, you are the master of crime theory...", Dawn chipped in now, happy to have finally found a nail to keep the stubborn doctor on ground level with. 

That was like a slap into Mark's face and he was stunned with how much might those people were playing a game that hadn't even really started. Jesse had been right, all this had turned into a witch hunt from the moment he had signed the chart with the administered morphine and his name. They had found someone who was guilty enough in their eyes and now they were using all their power to fight against an invisible devil.

At Mark's silence the other men smiled artificially. Mark knew he had lost. 

************* 

Steve exited the elevator only a few minutes later to find his father still leaning at the reception desk and hiding his face in the palms of his hands. His son approached him carefully. "Dad?"

Mark turned around, facing Steve hazily. It seemed as though he hadn't recognized immediatly. 

Steve grinned, but he felt slightly insecure. His father's condition was remarkable bad and a certain sign for something awful going on. Just like his father, also Steve had learned to interpret certain symptoms over the years. Mark was a balanced man, he usually didn't tend to be either hysterical or incoherent or –as now- totally jumpy. "Dad, it's me. Steve, you know, the guy who never washes the dishes..." 

His attempt to lighten the situation failed, but he hadn't expected anything else. He just hadn't known what else to say.

Mark laughed wearily and ran one hand through his white hair. "I'm sorry, son. I think I'm having some problems here..."

Steve shook his head. "Oh, don't tell me it's true! They are really investigating against Jesse?"

His father gave him a puzzeled look. "How did you know?"

Steve nagged his bottom lip. "Harris' lawyer mentioned something like that when he was at the precinct to...release Harris on bail..."

"What?!", Mark shouted, not bothered by the horrorfied glances he earned from the nurses and EMT's around. Nevertheless he lowered his voice after this sudden outbreak. "They released him? What kind of miracle happened to him?"

"The miracle has got a name..." Steve let his dad wait in anticipation. "James Barlow!"

"Mr Watergate?"

"In flesh and blood", Steve replied wryly, seeing his father's hands drumming onto the desk nervously. The question he had been about to ask earlier popped up in his mind again. "Dad...you know...no one really thinks that Jesse would make a mistake like that, do they?"

"Son, they don't think it was mistake...", Mark's voice trailed off, leaving it to Steve to guess what he didn't want to speak out loud again. The word had been used to often in the past hours and Mark was sick of it.

Steve gasped. "Oh no...what are you intending to do?"

Thinking about it, Mark had no idea. Everything was wrong and there was seemingly no oppotunity for him to set it right. But something had to be done. And coming to a quick decision, Mark knew where he would start. He had to talk to somebody. "Hey Steve, could you give me a ride?"

******** 

Jesse was reluctant to sit up, foreseeing the increasing of the throbbing pain that was sent out by his collarbone. There wouldn't be any difference between sitting and lying anyway, since he was completely surrounded by darkness ever since he had first opened his eyes. He lay on a wooden ground which he had only come to realize as he had shifted his body and thereby several splinters had bored into his arms and hands.

Not being able to see anything, Jesse had quickly figured that the attempt to pull the pieces of wood out of his skin would be of no success. But they hurt so much that Jesse didn't dare to move any more on the floor. Of course he could have pushed himself up, he had once tried it already, but by the same second a sharp pain had shot through is body, crossing his whole torso from the collarbone through the ribs down to the hips. Groaning he'd sunk back into the position in which he'd woken up an eternity ago. Lying on the site while his left arm was slowly getting numb under the weight of his own body was certainly not the most comfortable way of resting, nevertheless, it was right now the only way Jesse could prevent himself from putting his body under more physical pain than necessary.

The young doctor had lost his sense of time completely, even if there had been light in the room, it wouldn't have been of any help, since, as Jesse himself had noticed only some time ago, his watch was missing. Not knowing why he felt that sting when realizing that it was not there anymore, Jesse wondered if he would ever get to see it again. Probably not. The watch 

was something special to him, though or–as he admitted to himself wryly- especially because it was a gift from his father. To anybody else the watch would never have looked the value it had for its owner for it was not even a very pretty or stylish watch. Jesse had often seen this watch as the only connection he had to his father, the only reminder that he _did_ have a dad after all.

He hadn't paid attention to his movements, so, when he suddenly felt the throbbing pain again he gasped in both surprise and shock. He had known it would hurt, however, he hadn't expected that some simple thoughtless shifting of his arms would almost cost him the air to breath.

Jesse had no doubt that Harris was behind all this, even though the only time he had guessed to recognize the face had been as it was reflected in the window pane. Strangely enough, Jesse wasn't scared as much as he thought he should be. Earlier when he had been in trouble there had always been someone who had worried about him, people who, as he knew, would sooner or later come to help him because he mattered something to them.

He wasn't too sure if that was the case now. The only things that had always made his life enjoyable –his friends and his job- had suddenly left him. He had stopped believing in what he had so loved to do and therefore had destroyed the basis of a great friendship. While his breathing slowed down again and Jesse put his hand protectively over his upper body, he thought that he couldn't still expect Mark to believe him. Jesse didn't trust himself anymore, so why the hell was Mark supposed to trust him.

Lying there in the blackness, Jesse all of sudden felt that, no matter what Harris was up to, it wouldn't hurt more than the doubtful look in his mentor's eyes. That was the moment a door opened and the young man was blinded by a dazzling ray of light.

*************

Driving all the way to Venice, both Sloans had been untypically quiet. Steve had made some growling comments at other people's driving habits and Mark had only sat there. Even though he had leaned back comfortably, there was something about his dad's expressions that let Steve sense that his father wasn't feeling comfortable at all. The lieutenant was sure that the presented facts about Jimmy Harris' death, the current investigations and Jesse's expell didn't really state everything that had happened in the CGH in the near past. There was something Mark was keeping as a secret from him and Steve, hating it to be the last with the falling penny and naturally sensing some kind of danger for everyone involved behind every secret fact, was going to find out what it was.

"Dad, I understand that you worry about Jesse, but he'll be fine. He knows that he can rely on us and we will prove all Mr Days and Barlows on this earth that there is nothing behind what they say...", he tried to lighten up the mood of his obviously discouraged father. 

Mark closed his eyes for a moment, fearing to reply anything. But he knew that Steve expected him to say something. "It's not only that...", he started cautiously with an unusual amount of reluctance in his voice.

"Don't say...", Steve mumbled, sounding somewhat bitter.

His father took a deep breath. "Jesse thinks that I don't believe him."

That mere sentence forced Steve's attention away from the road, he simply had to look at his dad who sat in his seat and motionlessly stared out of the window at the houses filing past.

The lieutenant shook his head. "How the hell did he come up with that?"

"Because at that moment...", Mark waited a second before he continued, "...at that one moment it was true."

"What?!?", Steve shouted, glaring at his father. His look clearly told Mark that he didn't know what to think anymore. Finally there was a red traffic light and Steve was forced to stop the car and sort his mind. "Why...Dad...", he gasped, no idea of what he could say. That didn't fit to his father at all. Mark usually put his hands into the fire for his friends.

The older doctor wasn't sure if he should tell Steve that he'd try and explain it to him. After this revealing confession he didn't know if his son was in the state of listening to him. Mark waited until the traffic lights became green and Steve started the car again, before he started to talk. "You know what happened when your great-grandmother died...", he began softly, his memories passing the pictures that were on his mind. Far away. Long ago. "Who helped her dying...", he became more specific.

"Yeah..", Steve murmured, his eyes suddenly focussed on the road steadily. He knew how his great-grandmother had died. His father had told him some years ago or, to put it more directly, had confessed it. His great-grandmother had been ill before and his father had done what he had thought had been the best for her.

Since that day Mark had never lost a word about it again and Steve had never asked. He had realized that even his father, his loving, caring, good-natured dad, his friend, his idol, wasn't perfect or free of any regrets.

Mark sighed, before he slowly spoke. "I thought it was right what I did then. Your great-grandmother was very ill, she suffered and I was young, idealistic and I had the power to draw the line. So I did. It seemed to be the right decision then and some people would even say that it was the right thing to do. But that doesn't change anything. Doctors heal, they don't kill..."

"I don't see, what Jesse has to do with it...", Steve answered, though that was only partly true. He saw his father's grief and he had an, however slight, idea of what his dad wanted to tell him. 

Mark shook his head, if in sudden realization or disappointment, Steve wasn't able to say.

"You are right, son, that's the point, Jesse has nothing to do with it. I had an argument with him before Jimmy Harris died and Jesse made a remark, saying something like he was sorry that he rescued the boy...", Mark played the scene over in his head again and nagged his bottom lip. "I could understand that he was frustrated, I should've listened to him...instead I totally lost it. And then, he accused me that I wouldn't believe him and I...for a moment I saw me, standing there, having just made a wrong decision...so I didn't deny it. I judged him for something I did. I thought I would be doubting him, but I only..."

"...mistrusted yourself.", Steve ended the sentence for him. He had been listening in pure astonishment to what his father had said. Apart from the fact that there was again a sign of weakness in Dr Sloan's normally so indestructable attitude, he also for the first time noticed how much his father projected himself into his young charge.

While his son was silent Mark added a small, regretful sentence. "What kind of a friend am I to treat him this way? I can only pray that Jesse will be able to forgive me..."

*************** 

Jesse wasn't really surprised, once his eyes had got used to the light and he saw the broad, threatening stature of Mr Harris coming over to him from the door. It wasn't the first time he could watch Harris from this perspective, lying helpless and numb with pain on the ground, but the mere appearance of Jimmy's tall, scaring father sent a shudder down his spine.

He couldn't get up himself, it hurt too much. Only the slight attempt of forcing is elbows to push his torso upwards was enough for the straining wave of hurt to return with even greater strength than before. This time Jesse had the feeling as though a flash had hit him and was rushing through his body, shaking it and then leaving it as Jesse sank, groaning and shivering, back onto the hard floor.

Harris stood still and peered down on his hostage. He would seek his revenge and he would get it. No one would accuse him of killing his own son. He hadn't done it, but he would make this "doctor", as that little rat called himself, make confess it. "Get up!", he commanded.

Jesse remained on the floor, still fighting against the aftermaths of his last motions which were threatening to take away his consciousness. As much as Jesse simply wanted to flee from the pain and rest in the dark, he knew he couldn't pass out. Staying awake was probably his only chance to stay alive for some time at least. He felt sick, he hadn't been scared some mintues ago, but he was now. 

As Dr Travis didn't get up, Harris became impatient. If this doctor didn't see the necessity of getting to his damn feet, he would make him see it. "Damnit, get up!!", he shouted, noticing satisfiedly how Jesse winced.

Jesse indeed felt the urge to press his hands onto his ears, but he was frightened of the pain. It would come back as soon as he moved. So he listened to the shout, how it stroke his ears, almost like the bang of a gun, sudden, loud, air-tearing, causing a vibration in the room. The bald walls and the obviously high-built room took the words and shot them back at Jesse, so that they echoed in his head, penetrated his ears over and over again. His head ached, he felt sick from the steady sound of furiosity around him, a sound that only slowly vanished. Jesse let out a shuddered breath, hoping that it would take away some of his sickness.

Also Harris seemed to be amazed by the effects his voice had taken because he remained where he was for a moment, only watching the young man, how he shivered, moaned and writhed through the different sorts of pain that affected his body. Harris liked the sight of helplessness. Nevertheless, he was getting tired of that game and he had realized that Travis would never get to his feet himself.

Jesse had been waiting for something to happen, he hadn't expected Harris to be happy with yelling at him. But he hadn't been waiting for that. A strong, cold hand suddenly wrapped around his neck, this time it didn't even touch the collarbone, but was directly placed under his chin, pressing so heavily against his respiratory tracts and his aorta that Jesse could feel his blood pulsing through it. He struggeled to breath as the hand pulled him up.

This time Jesse wanted to scream, it hurt so much. It wasn't even to be compared with a flash, the throbbing pain that was tormenting his body was something far beyond pain. But the loss of oxygen didn't allow him to give a single loud away, the scream that burned inside of him never reached the air. The tears that formed in his eyes as he was pressed against the wall and still held by the fingers around his neck were not about to flow. Not yet.

The pain slowly became less intense, was still there, but bearable. And even the hand around Jesse's neck loosened a bit. He took a deep shaken breath, struggeling for each single bit of oxygen that was able to reach his lungs through the still tight, but not choking, grib.

"How does it feel, doc?", Harris asked, cruelity and desperation equally flackering in his eyes when he looked at Jesse.

"Why...are you doing...this?", Jesse asked back, more gasping and rather surprised that after this ordeal he was still able to speak at all.

"That is what the law does with killers. Kill them!", Harris answered.

"I...I didn't kill your son!", Jesse said, putting as much force into those words as he was able to give.

He heard something wizzing through the air and by the time he had an idea of what it was, it was too late to protect himself, in case there had been an oppotunity to do so. Jesse was already seeing stars when he finally felt the shattering pain. Harris had hit him with his fist right into the face, as he pulled his hand back there was blood on it, blood that was freely running from Jesse's nose down his chin and dropped onto his shirt. Jesse only noticed that he was bleeding when he felt a thin stream of liquid on his lips and when he opened his eyes he saw the fresh blood on Harris knuckles as the man was aiming for the second punch.

"Don't deny it, little bastard!", he yelled.

"No, really I didn't do it!", Jesse repeated loudly, at the same time closing his eyes. He knew there were more blows to come.

************** 

Mark and Steve had reached the floor on which Jesse's apartement was and knocked on the door. They hadn't spoken much for the rest of the ride, until they had entered the apartement house. 

At their first knock, no one opened up. "Maybe he's still sleeping!", Mark suggested.

"Jesse? Jess, are you there!?", Steve asked, raising his voice, careful not to cause too much attention among the usually curious other parties of the block. Again father and son got no answer. 

"He has to be there, his car is in the parking lot!", Steve mumbled, but also his third attempt was of no success.

"So...", Mark turned to his son, "I think we will make use of the spare key..."

Steve shrugged. "Okay, go ahead and open up!"

Mark looked at him with a mix of astonishment and confusion. "Why me? I thougt you'd have the spare key..."

Steve shook his head. "No, I thought you were having the..." He trailed of, meeting his dad's eyes for a moment, both of them ready for a smile, something easing they had been looking for so desperatly through the last hour.

Mark hung his head in playful sadness and turned to go. "You try again and I'll go and look for the landlord."

Steve nodded his okay and saw his father heading off, then continued to knock against the door. Maybe, it crossed his mind, Jesse didn't even want to open up. After all, he couldn't hold it against him. And remembering the last time, he had gone into Jesse's apartement without announcing his entering – the time when he had almost had a fatal meeting with a baseball bat- the lieutenant thought it was the best thing to be a bit smarter this time.

"Jesse?", he called again, louder than before. "Jesse, I know you probabaly don't wanna see me or anyone else, but you have to open up. It was a misunderstanding, you have to believe me. Jess, please, open up and we can talk, okay?", he got still no answer. "I won't discuss this with you through the door, please open up!", he hammered against the door again, but then, slightly cursing he let go. He could as well wait for the key.

Looking around, he suddenly became aware of an elder woman he was standing in the door frame of the apartement oppsite to Jesse's. Steve didn't know how long she had been watching and the slight grimace on her face made him feel uneasy. "Oh", Steve suddenly blushed as he thought of what the woman probably had heard. "Urm...that wasn't what it sounded, you know, I...he is just a friend of mine, a good friend, uh...not how you might think...", he tried to explain, stuttering while she continued to watch him.

"I have the key!", Mark shouted, coming up the stairs.

"God bless you...", murmured Steve as his father stuck the key into the lock and raised an eyebrow. "Viola...", whispered, not wanting to startle Jesse, in case he really hadn't heard them knocking. 

They entered the apartement which seemed left. The kitchen hadn't been used, but the unopened mail lay on the counter. The AM light was blinking, Mark knew that at least one message was from him. "Jesse?", Steve called into the emptiness of the living-room. No answer.

Steve and Mark made their way, over to the bedroom door. Mark knocked carefully and only when he got no answer after a long time, he cautiously peered into it. He had been waiting to find Jesse, probably sleeping a drugged sleep which a pill of valium was able to give. But the bed was empty. Mark now fully opened the door and Steve was right behind him as he entered the room. The bed didn't even look as though it had been used, there was no sign of their best friend having spent the past night here

"Now that's weird...", Mark mumbled.

"Any idea where he could be?", Steve inquired, looking around for something like an evidence of anything, as he was lieutenant that was his way to find out what was going on.

His dad shook his head. "Not the slightest...", he answered, rubbing his hands together because he was freezing. His head jerked up and he went over to the window. It wasn't closed, only leaned. Mark first threw a glance outside, then examined the pane for any sign of violence having been vent on it.

Steve came closer. "That isn't like Jesse! He wouldn't leave his apartement with the window being open. He could as well nail a shield on the door 'Feel free to rob me!'"

Mark shook his head. "Someone broke the lock, even if Jesse had wanted it, he wouldn't have been able to lock it. It snaps open again, you see...", he father demonstrated it and Steve nodded and frowned at the same time.

"But it doesn't look like a robbery...nothing is missin'...", all of sudden the realization kicked in as Mark and Steve noticed that something –or _someone_- was, indeed, missing.

"Damnit!", Steve slapped his head, squeezing his eyes shut for a second. "He's got him!"

"Who has got him?", Mark asked, seeing how his son pulled his cellphone out of his pocket.

"Harris!", explained Steve.

"You don't know that for sure!"

Steve took a deep impatient breath, eyeing his father with a hint of anger in his gaze. Anger that adressed him, Mark thought, though feeling oddly happy to see it, almost as though his own furiosity at himself now had some sort of a mirror, which made it more intense, yet, more explicit and so less scaring as well. 

"Harris is out on bail. He is angry. He wants revenge. Jesse is nowhere to be found. I bet when that smart-ass Barlow told him Jesse's name, he was already flipping through the yellow pages."

Steve paused, his voice suddenly becoming thin.

"I know it, dad, I knew he was planning something from the moment he left the interrogation room. How could I miss that? He has attacked Jesse once already, I was obvious...I'd bet both of my arms for this, this was Harris!"

Mark closed his eyes while Steve called Tanis at the precinct. If it was really true and Harris had got Jesse, it would all be a nightmare. And Mark had no doubt that Steve was right.

***********

Jesse sat leaning against the wall, his left arm clunched heavily around his chest where he still felt his ribs cracking. 

Harris had soon stopped beating him into the face, since Jesse hadn't even groaned because he had been concentrated on staying awake. After all, the young doctor was bleeding out of his nose and his mouth, the blood continued to stream down his face and had by now wettened a good third of the front of his shirt. The third blow had been the worst. That was when Jesse's tongue had accidently happened to be between his molars and by the time the beat had hit him, he had felt how his teeth had pierced the flesh almost to the middle. The bitter taste of iron and cutting hurt had made Jesse grimace, however, he hadn't dared to open his mouth and gasp for air. He had feared that the next blow might hit his teeth then.

When Harris had suddenly taken his hand away from his neck, Jesse had found out in a hard and painful way, that his legs weren't able to support his body and he had slumped back onto the floor, his fall only slowed by the wall he was leaning against. Jesse had landed heavily on his site and his right elbow. The smash up on the wooden ground had forced another splinter into his wrist, very deep this time and Jesse had been able to see for a moment how the light wood had been soaked with his blood as well as his shirt.

"Say it!", had Harris commanded. "Say that you killed my son!"

"I didn't!", Jesse had repeated. He had repeated it again and again, and as often as he had done it, he had been hit.

"Don't lie at me! I know you did it! I didn't kill Jimmy. It was you!", Harris had shouted, it sounded almost pleadingly. He wanted this doctor to admitt it. To be honest, Mr Harris had wanted it to be over as much as Jesse probably did. Harris wasn't someone to torture people because he was having fun. He wanted revenge. And the fact that it didn't feel as good as he had thought, scared him and made him even angrier.

So the calm steady repetition that came from Dr Travis lips had always made him furious enough to beat the young man again. And again. Harris had almost prayed to God that Travis would finally make a confession. 

"I didn't kill your son!", Jesse had said and cried out as the kick had hit his chest. When he had opened his mouth a flood of blood had escaped, a sight that had been so disgusting for Harris' eyes that he had put his foot back to his earth, instead of kicking his victim a second time.

Jesse had coughed out the blood that had been collected in his mouth and came from his swollen tongue. Somehow he had managed to keep himself backed up on his elbow all the time, so he wouldn't end up in a comepletely defenseless position where it had been easy for Harris to torment both his body and his face with kicks. But Harris hadn't kicked him anymore. The sight of his victim spitting out red thick liquid had disgusted Harris somehow. He had decided that he needed a break. 

"You'd better think about what you say! I'll be back!", he had said, kicked Jesse once more, however, not as hard as the first time, and headed off.

Jesse still couldn't believe it had suddenly been over so fast. He had no explanation for it. But that didn't matter right now. For the moment he could rest. Slowly he had sat up and leaned against the wall, wincing and groaning with every motion until he was sure he had enough support to be able to hold himself upright. 

One hand pressed against his ribs and the other one over his mouth, switching between coughing, breathing and sobbing, each of those single actions caused his ribs to crack and sent waves of sharp pain though his limp form. As much as he wanted it to stop hurting, he couldn't stop moving. He needed to cough since his mouth was heavily flooded with blood from his tongue and he also wasn't certain if some of this blood was actually coming from his lungs or stomach. Harris first kick had been well-aimed directly into the chest, but the second had been less placed and had hit his stomach, yet, not as heavy as his chest before. But Jesse wasn't sure if his organs had been really affected, his whole body was a whole mass of pain, throbbing, burning, sharp, dull, steady sorts of pain, he couldn't localize the part that hurt most. His mouth and nose were bleeding, his torso was aching, his arms were burning and bleeding a bit as well – at least the wrist with the huger piece of wood in it- and his legs were numb, he was sick. 

Oh yes, Jesse had all reasons to breath as well. After all, this was the only thing that assured him that he was still alive. Awake and alive, though the attractive unconscioussness was slowly getting the better part of him.

Jesse sobbed. He knew he shouldn't, but he simply had to. Sometimes a tear escaped from his eyes, rolled down his cheek and dropped onto his shirt where it mixed with the drying blood. He cried, he didn't want to, he knew it was even increasing the hurt, but he couldn't prevent it. He was sore, he was scared and he was alone. He was punished for something he hadn't done. He had thought about it, damnit, yes, he had thought of killing Jimmy. But he hadn't.

Even if it didn't matter to them. They judged him, they expelled him, they beat him. 'They won't listen to me', Jesse thought. 'Dawn wouldn't listen to me, Day wouldn't listen to me, not even Mark would listen to me. Why should Harris be listening?' 

Jesse sighed and felt a tear sliding down his cheek. It was the truth. He could as well give in. 


	6. Chapter 5

Hey all!! Wow, I was really overwhelmed by your reviews, thanks that you like the story so much and give me feedback (especially this kind of feedback). I'm so happy, I could hug all of you! Hey hey hey, don't run away, I won't do it, here is the next part of the story for you instead.

***********

It hadn't taken Steve more than half an hour until he pulled his truck into the the parking lot that belonged to one of the huge glazed skycrapers in downtown LA. For once in his life the traffic Gods had been with him, and where they had put a red traffic light into his way Steve had mercilessly ignored it. Fortunately Mark had agreed to take a cab back to the hospital where he and Amanda would wait for any sign of Jesse. Steve was grateful for his father not being with him right now. This was something he rather wanted to handle his own way. He didn't know if it would be dangerous for him.

The elevator seemed to take ages while Steve couldn't stop pacing in front of the still shut doors. Of course, he could have walked up the stairs, but his goal was on the 13th floor and he figured that he'd still need his breath. When he finally heard the 'Hell, I'm already there, okay?!' – ringing and the doors slid open in provocative calmness, Steve made his way into the elevator cabin and impatiently pressed the button to make sure that he would land on the thirteenth floor without any disturbing breaks.

James Barlow's secretary was busy answering a phone call while manicuring her nails, but –just like to the traffic lights- Steve paid no attention to her existance. Instead he walked directly over to the door on which nicely swung brass letters read that Mr Dr law Barlow was residing there. By the time the woman had noticed that someone unauthorized was stomping past her desk, Steve had already vanished behind the heavy, wooden door and since there came no complaints from inside, she decided that there were more important things – like her vulgarly red-painted nails for example- waiting for her.

Lieutenant Sloan found himself standing in a sun-flooded room, in expectation of the upcoming noon heat the Venetian blinds had been halfly shut as a precaution. In despite of the warmth in his office, James Barlow was dressed –as Steve had almost suggested- in a gray suit, again a strangely colored tie was slightly disturbing the impression of the otherwise oh so smooth lawyer.

Looking up from his paperwork, an arrogant little smile was hushing over Mr Barlow's face when he saw Steve who hadn't moved one inch from the door towards the desk where the lawyer was seated. "Lieutenant Sloan, what a great mispleasure to see you, how can I help you?", in inquired, getting to to his feet, obviously bored.

Steve's eyes narrowed at the condescending tone Barlow was using. "Where is he?", he asked merely and didn't waste a thought about showing how furious he really was. He knew that wasn't the way to deal with Barlow.

"Pardon? I'm afraid, I think I'm not quite able to follow you...", Barlow replied, sneering.

Steve slowly approached him and also the lawyer had left his position behind his desk. "Harris", said Steve, "Where is he?"

Barlow raised one eyebrow and answered with a half-heartedly supressed giggle. "Come again? Apart from the fact that you run into my office as though it was donut shop, you really have the guts to ask me where a trusting client –who is a free man by the way- is spending his time?!" The indignation in Barlow's voice was evident, however, it was as artificial as everything else that came out of his mouth.

Steve shrugged unimpressedly. "You have the guts to cover a murderer and kidnapper, so I think we are both not the ones to discuss moralistic matters here. I only wanna know where Harris is!"

"That's none of your buisness. As said, my client is a free man on bail and our law allows those people to walk wherever they want as long as it isn't out of our state", the lawyer stated cooly.

"Yeah and the law also allows me to put away those people as soon as they committ another crime!", Steve retorted. 

Barlow scratched his plainly shaved chin. "I don't exactly see your point, Lieutenant. Why do you wanna know where Harris is, why do you guess that I know where he is and –most important- why do you think I would tell you?"

Steve raised his brows and innocently put his hands into the pockets of his Jeans. "Oh well, that's a whole bunch of questions. So, first of all, Harris has kidnapped one of my friends and I somehow have the feeling that you know that as well as I do. I have trouble with the third question, though. You know, maybe I was thinking of that _accessory-to-a-crime-is-illegal_-thing..."

The lawyer stared at the police man and though he was now completely controlled, Steve had meant to see some sort of astonishment in the other man's face for a moment. Nevertheless, with the shock effect gone, Barlow laughed out loudly and made a movement as though he wanted to wipe a tear away that had been caused by his amusement. "Pedants like you always fascinate me, Sloan!", he grinned. "Did you really think that if you come in here and threat me I would confess a crime of which you can't even prove it was committed?!" He shook his head in mild confusion. "I thought that even you would have learned by now that you need evidence to make somebody a suspect."

Steve could well imagine what his father would have said right now. '_Go and tell that Mr_ _Dawn!_' But the lieutenant didn't remain lost in thoughts for long. So he was right where he was supposed to be as Barlow mumbled an unfriendly "Excuse me!" and tried to pass him by.

By the time they met in the middle of the room, Steve had his arms already crossed in front of his chest, a posture that, added to the fact that he was about ten inches taller than James Barlow, was clearly telling that he wasn't someone you wanted to mess with.

James Barlow was still controlled, however, Steve sensed he was getting nervous. His eyes where wandering from one corner into the other, slight drops of sweat were visible on his forehead. Even his voice wore some of the umcomfortability the lawyer was probably feeling when he said:"Whatever you are trying here, Sloan, it's not going to work. You know, having holstered cops around always affects my memory considerably."

"Don't worry, I left my gun in the car...", Steve replied bitter-sweetly. He was blocking Barlow's path, his blue eyes coldly fixed on the gray man.

"I have a principle, Lieutenant. Everything my clients tell me is confidential. That also counts for Mr Harris!", Barlow said, his voice still firm.

Steve's gaze remained on the smaller man in front of him. Sometimes patience indeed seemed to pay. "Really?", he growled and took a deep breath. "So then, I recommed to you to forget your principles for once, Mr Barlow! Otherwise...", and now he only spoke through gritted teeth, "I'll forget mine!"

************

Harris threw a look out of the window, he knew he was running out of time. The man he had been holding hostage for hours had friends and sooner or later they'd start to search for their lost doctor. Harris had seen them, the cop who had arrested and interrogated him and the pretty young women, who both had knelt down beside Dr Travis once Harris had send him to the floor with a blow into the face. 

Fumbling on his lighter and at the same time producing a cigarett into his mouth, Jimmy's father stared through the pane into the gray-asphalted backyard of the run-down house. This was not his house, it was nobody's home at least as far as Harris knew. The multistorey houses which framed the old Los Angeles harbor were at present nothing more but some ruins no one cared about. In that way they had something in common with himself, thought Harris, considering that he had only come here because he had had nowhere else to go. Within a minute, he had lost everything.

Jimmy had always been a nice boy. His mother, well, she was somewhat demanding, but his little son, thought Harris, had been a great kid. He hadn't deserved what had happened to him. So far Harris had come with his conclusions, but he was still wrapped up in the believing that his son's death had been only this doctor's fault. That doctor was responsible for everything, he had destroyed the Harris' familiy, taken their hopes, he was the one and only reason why Harris had from one second to another lost everything he loved. Everyone he loved.

He couldn't help but feeling how he envied the young Dr Travis. This man had people who cared about him. People who did their best that nothing happened to him. 'I couldn't do that for Jimmy...', it suddenly popped up in Harris' mind. 'I couldn't protect him!'

Furiosity and nervousity crawled through his body. He didn't have any time. Travis had to pay. He had to confess.

Jesse had sunk into a semi-conscious state, which still allowed him to flinch from time to time when a breath he'd taken tortured his broken ribs, but prohibited him to clunch his arms around his chest when he felt the marrow-piercing pain. His hands both lay loosely on his stomach where a dull nausea had spread. As much as Jesse wanted to throw up, he surpressed th urge in the knowlegde that his upper body probably wouldn't be able to stand the convulsions it would necessarily cause. 

The blood from his nose, lips and arms had soaked and dried into his clothes, and even though he couldn't see his hands, Jesse could feel the sticky liquid on his otherwise sweaty skin. Indeed some source of heat which occured in irregular, but certain intervals bathed him in cold sweat that ran into his eyes and wettened the parts of his shirt which hadn't been affected by the exessive blood flow. In the next second he was freezing again, shivering and clattering with his teeth and wished nothing more than closing his arms around his torso. However, every single effort he put up to move ended up being another shattering wave of pain and strain, so that Jesse had given in to the hurt.

Since most parts of his body were numb as soon as he decided to sit still, resting against the wall, he felt more or less free of pain right now. But the other part of his mind which had never turned its attention to the physical shape of his body wasn't to be held still just like that.

His memories were hovered around and a wild mix of fast appearing and vanishing images tormented him as soon as he tried to close his eyes and sink into the welcoming blackness of unconsciousness. Jimmy's pale and lifeless body on the examing table in the path lab, Morton mumbling something, Mark's untypically instable glare when he said:"You don't mean this...I know you don't...". Jimmy, Morton, Mark, Jimmy, Morton, Mark, they continued to be there, penetrating his mind with their faces, their words, going faster and faster, becoming louder and louder, boring deeper and deeper into his subconciousness until Jesse wanted to scream.

The scream was nothing but an agonized gasp when Jesse felt that he was fully awake by the time his lungs hit against the broken bones in his chest. This was worse than everything before, this moment of breath-stealing pain was worse than he had ever imagined it to be. His blood was pounding heatedly through his throat, he heart was making noises loud enough for him to be able to count every beat, his eyes felt as though two thumbs were trying to push them out of his head from inside.

Jesse waited a few seconds before the pain had lost some of its paralysing strength and even then he was hell of scared of breathing in. It was hardly bearable, yet, compared to the hurt before a remarkable improvement.

The young man had just settled back against the wall, expecting to slide back into the state which held the enjoyment of being only halfly-aware of his surroundings and his circumstances when the door of his prison opened with a bang. 

Still dizzy from the past ordeal, Jesse was even more blinded by the weak light that backed- up Harris tall figure and –ironically- bestowed him the congenial picture of a holy stature. Nevertheless, if that thought had ever crossed Jesse's mind, it was destroyed as soon as he witnessed Harris stomping towards him, the faiding glim of a cigarette giving a vague image of how many feet seperated his face from his wincing victim.

"Get up!", he commanded uncreatively.

Jesse shivered. He clearly recalled what had happened the last time when the physical state of his limp body had refused to do what was expected from him. He only about remembered the pain itself, but he still knew that he had been sure then that he wouldn't survive another attack to his collarbone. However, he knew he would never get to his feet. He could bearly breath, he didn't even dare to think of what would happen if he tried to stand up.

Harris bent over. He didn't say anything again and Jesse couldn't sense what he was up to since his view was blurred and the light from outside wasn't strong enough to really reach his eyes. At first Jesse even thought he was save for moment, but as he found out too soon he had erred. Badly. 

The glowing cigarette was so darn hot that it was almost not perceptible in the very first second it was pressed onto the skin on the inside of Jesse's arm. Then however, it took its turn of torture. Jesse cried out, this time his body was so numb with burning pain that he forgot about his chest. The end of the cigarette scortched into the flesh, Harris had wisely picked a point where the skin was fairly thin. Having screamed once, the young man pressed his lips together, his teeth so tightly gritted that they were virtually wedging between each other.

"So will you finally confess? Will you say that you killed my son?", Harris asked his sweating hostage.

Jesse was shaking with hurt. He didn't want to fight anymore. For what? Why not leave Harris his success. It didn't matter anyway. He would give in. 

Jesse was so caught up with pain that he didn't hear what the other man suddenly heard. Harris inwardly sweared. He was getting visitors. "I'll be back!", he growled and pushed the doctor back against the wall to fasten his threat. Then he hurried off.

Steve had found the adress Barlow had given him all of sudden very voluntarily without any problems. He had problems though, finding his way through the endless, confusing corridors of the old house. Before going in, he had called for back-up, of course, but he hadn't wanted to wait. For the second time today Steve was relieved to be here without his father. His dad would have probably insisted on him to stay outside as long as back-up arrived or –and that would have been even worse- to join his son inside. Steve neither wanted to wait for anything in this world while he knew his friend was with a totally nuts guy somewhere in one of the empty flats, nor did he want to endanger his father. Having two people he loved from the deepest ground of his soul in the shooting line, were already two too many.

The parquet was creaking among his feet and every door he pushed open cautiously, holding his gun ready to fire, squealed. Steve never made it to fire. He had been aware of the fact that he had been making noises, what he hadn't know was that he had obviously made the hell of a din. Opening the entrance door of apartement no. 6 on the fourth floor –it could as well have been no.9, the numbers were so rickety that they would easily fall down or turn around- Steve could hear the sound that wasn't like any sound a house would make. However, he knew it. It was the clicking release of a half-automatic gun and it was directly over his left ear.

"Well, look who's come to join us!", Harris snarled, taking the gun Steve was holding. "You know the procedure, cop!"

Steve put up hands, moving slowly and prudently. "Where is Dr Travis?"

"He is fine..."

"He'd better be for your own sake! But where is he?!"

"I'm gonna show you..."

The door Harris unlocked finally lead to a room that had no light in its inside, the only window was blocked by bars of wood. The room at first seemed empty to Steve, but at the second look he discovered something on the floor, something that at the first sight looked more like a pile of clothes than like a human being. Steve gasped. "Oh God, Jess!!" Fast approaching his friend, Steve became more and more aware of Harris deed with every step he took. 

In the dim light Steve couldn't see a lot, but what he saw was enough to get an idea of how sickly Harris had been treating his friend. Crouching next to his best friend, who sat huddledly on the ground, seemingly not aware of anything around him, Steve snorted in disgust.

"Didn't you say he was fine?!", he barked over his shoulder into Harris' direction. Gently, he put one of his strong hands on Jesse's cheek, immediatly noticing the stained blood all over Jesse's face, the cheeks, the nose and the mouth. A small rim of obviously fresh blood ran from one corner of his mouth, dropping down on...at the sight of his friend's shirt Steve didn't know if he should vomit or turn around and try to strangle Harris with his bare hands.

"I meant fine as in 'not dead'", retorted Harris in the meantime, watching the scene with growing mispleasure.

Steve was at a loss of words, throwing a quick-witted answer into Harris' face was the least he was interested in now. Jesse's shirt hadn't kept much of its once light-blue, instead the frontal part was covered with blood and at several other places the red liquid had seeped through and formed dark spots.

"He got exactly what he deserved!", shouted Harris and added more quietly, speaking to the Lieutenant's back "And you will, too!" Then he shut the door and left the two men in the dark. He had to think of a plan.

With the light gone, it was impossible for Steve to examine his friend furtherly, though Jesse looked as though he was in bad need of professional medical attention. Sighingly, Steve let himself sink onto his knees next to his friend and found whose shoulder in the darkness. Softly he started to ruttle the younger man, careful not to cause anymore damage than had already been done. "Jesse! Can you hear me? You have to wake up, Jess!"

He indeed earned a reply, however he was not really satisfied by its content. "Please, stop! I will make that confession, but please..."

"No, Jess, it's me! Steve! I won't hurt you!", Steve was speaking intensely to make sure he was reaching his friend.

Jesse's eyelids flickered open. He couldn't see anything, it was dark and tears, the remains from the treat with the cigarette, covered his pupils with a layer of water. Nevertheless, he recognised his friend's voice. "Steve?...Wha...what are you doing here..."

"Well, I was just dropping by to see how you're doing...", Steve joked half-heartedly, but Jesse had realized anyway that he question had been kind of stupid. "I came looking for you, but Harris...caught me...", he mumbled, sounding a bit ashamed.

Jesse almost grinned. "You can't seem to get used to waiting for back-up, can you?"

Instead of an answer, a sudden flash of bright light struck his eyes, it wasn't coming from the door, but from the same direction as Steve's voice. The younger man moaned and squeezed his eyes shut. "Whoa, Steve, what's that?"

"You should know, doctor!", Steve teased friendly. 

Jesse now blinked and slowly opened his eyes again. "A penlight?" It really was a small penlight Steve had pulled out of his pocket. Since Mark was champion in losing these little, but very effective lamps, the Sloan's had about half a dozen of them lying around at home. Steve had once picked up one, in his job one never knew what it might be good for to have a little more light than available spent.

From the lieutenant himself, however, there was no answer to this question. Scrutinising his friend in the well-pointed ray of light, it almost let him swallow his tongue. Jesse's face was pale and swollen, his eyes and temples framed with gashes. Around his neck there were a few red marks in a strange, seemingly foreseen order. Looking closer, Steve noticed that this pattern was the exact print of what finger-tips of a male hand would leave behind. His friend chest rose and fell flatly, every breath was joined by an obviously painful shudder that stroke his body. Jesse mostly rolled up the sleeves of his shirt a bit, so Steve had a pretty good view a both wrists which were bleeding for some reason. Only when he directed all the brightness of the lamp at the wounds on the wrists, Steve could see the little pieces of wood, partly still visible on the surface of Jesse's clammy skin. Between the splinters, he noticed another one, different to those from the wood. At that point the skin was deep red and looking glazed, its edges marking a perfect red circle. It left no doubt to Steve that the skin was burned. "Damnit, what did that bastard do to you?", he mumbled in undertone, but Jesse was totally listening to him.

"Alphabetically or thematically ordered?...", he replied in mute sarcasm, suppressing a moan because speaking hurt as well. 

"But why...", Steve trailed off. The question was pointless, it seemed obvious that Harris was crazy. Crazy men didn't need any reasons to be cruel.

"He wants a confession. He wants me to confess that I killed Jimmy. When I refused to admitt it, he..", Jesse stopped talking, but Steve ended the sentence for him.

"Tortured you...", saying that, his stomach turned around, even more when Jesse attempted a weak nod.

Steve exhaled in rage. How could anybody do this to a human being. More precisely, how could anybody do this to Jesse? Why should anybody feel invited to treat him like this while Jesse treated everyone with respect and affection? Even people who didn't deserve it at all. Steve remembered what Jess had said when Harris had hit him at the hospital. _"I still feel sorry for him..."_

Next to him Jesse whimpered slightly, but only for a short moment, then he was quiet again. 

"Something wrong, Jess?" _Great question_, Steve cursed himself. 

Jesse shook his head while another wave nausea and heat felt as though it was crushing him. However, he collected all his strength to answer. Steve was only in this because of him. It wouldn't help if he worried about something he couldn't change. "No, it's nothing...just feelin' a bit heated..."

The crease on Steve's forehead deepened visibly. His friend was shivering, more, he clattered with his teeth as though he was about to freeze. "Just hang on, Jess. Help will be here soon, they will get us out of here!", he told his friend, glancing at his watch. In this prison with his best friend next to him, randomly coughing, moaning and struggeling for his next breath, every minute passed like an hour to Steve.

As though having paid no attention to what Steve had said, Jesse spoke out his own idea of sorting things out. "You heard him, Steve. He won't let us go just like that. He wants my confession...and if he so badly wants it, I will confess. It doesn't matter anymore..."

Steve's head whirled around, Jesse didn't need to face him to know how he was looking at him. Pure bewilderment speaking from his eyes, Steve shook his head determinedly. "You must be kidding, pal! Do you really think he will be satisfied with you making a simple confession? After that, what do you think, he will do to you?!"

Jesse shrugged. "I don't care...", he muttered under his breath, he felt the pressure in his chest was increasing.

"You are lying, Jess!", Steve had to force himself not to grab his friend and ruttle him out of this nonsense talking. He didn't want to shout, the least he wanted to do was scare Jesse, but he couldn't be serious with that.

In the dim light the penlight was giving them, he could see Jesse shooting him a look. His eyes were glazed, a feverish sparkle lay in them, giving the blue a hazy, yet undistracted expression. "You want the truth?", Jesse winced. As much as he wanted to sound eager, he was in no condition to raise his voice. So he continued hoarsely: "Fact is, that no matter what I did or didn't, no one wants to believe me. So what difference does it make if I make that confession or not? It's probably still gonna save you. You shouldn't even be here, nothing of what happened is your fault!"

"Nor it was yours! You didn't kill Jimmy!" Steve took a deep breath. That wasn't an answer he would have expected to hear from Jesse Travis. What had shattered his best friend's faith in himself so deeply that he didn't want to fight anymore? More calmly he adressed Jesse now:"I know you're innocent, Jesse! And you know that, too! Why do you think, you deserve all this more than anyone else?!"

Obviously also Jesse had run of of strength for a really hostile tone. "But I thought about it! I thought that it was better for everyone if Jimmy had died! I would have spared so many people a lot of pain, him, his family..."

Steve's lips twisted wryly. "Well, I'm some sort of an expert for those matters and all I can tell you is that thinking about it doesn't make you a killer!", he reasoned.

"No, but a bad doctor!", Jesse retorted grievingly. "You don't understand that, Steve, I was just selfish, I wanted to make everything better, but only made it worse. I should have known better than to act like that. My opinion of what is good or bad doesn't give me the right to judge about anybody's life, if it's worth being lived or not ...I failed!"

Steve had been listening in all patience, yet he'd had the feeling that Jesse was more talking to himself. Now, he believed, it was his turn to say something. "I think, I do understand it, Jesse! I see tragedies every day, I see kids killing off their parents, I see parents killing their kids, women who kill their husbands, husbands who beat their wifes to death for money, fun, hatred, frustration or no reason at all. Most of the people who I spent my time with ain't even worth five minutes of it. I know how it is to deal with life and death, I know it sucks. I know how it is if you are willing to change the world and then, in fact, nothing happens. It's frustrating. And thinking that doesn't make you bad at anything and not at all as a doctor. You, my dad and Amanda, you do one hell of a job and if you wouldn't do it, no one would..."

"Thanks Steve. But it doesn't change anything. Harris doesn't believe me as you can see, Brandon Dawn and his superb lawyer don't believe me...even your father doesn't believe me!", Jesse launched, his words several times interrupted by surpressed groaning.

Steve lowered his head, biting on his lip. He had seen how Jesse had grimaced at the mention of his father. Steve felt that it wasn't his turn to explain what his father had been thinking, but he also wouldn't leave it just like that. I could imagine how the doubts of a man that he respected so highly and –and Steve was sure of this- loved so deeply must have hurt Jesse enormously. "As to my father...", Steve started carefully, "He does believe you. Please just give him a chance, I know he has made a terrible mistake, but..." 

"No!", Jesse cut in sharply, shaking his head. "Your dad wasn't mistaken. He had all rights not to trust me! They were all right not to trust me...", he lowered his head.

Steve watched him in silent shock. This wasn't Jesse, indeed. Something about him had gone, his friend couldn't figure but it was, but it was an important part of what Jesse Travis was. Steve only knew that he had to help his friend regaining it...very soon.

"I trust you!", Steve said very clearly speaking, leaving Jesse no time to complain, argue, chip in or whatever. "I trust you with my life and I'm certain that you would never violate this trust. But I would never trust the person who sits next to me right now because this is not the Jesse Travis who is my friend and like a brother to me! Jesse wouldn't let go himself just like that, or drown himself in self-pity. Jesse wouldn't give up, even if all fates were against him. Dr Travis would never fail a friend or a patient because he doesn't stop believing in them or in himself. And...", Steve added, playing grumpily, "Jesse would have already stopped me babbeling all this mushy stuff and told me to shut up..."

Jesse grinned softly. "Shut up!", he said.

Steve smiled. "I want my little brother back!"

Jesse nodded. For the first time in days he felt that he had a friend. Maybe the best friend of all. 

Despite of the pressure in his chest and the paralysing pain from his arm, Jesse was about to say something, though he knew that he couldn't say anything that would match the gratitude he felt. All of sudden, he recalled what Morton had told him, shortly before that monster of a security man had caused Jesse's arms to crack tormentingly. _"It's no crime to lose faith in_ _what you do. You only have to regain it." _

For now no words should leave Jesse's mouth. Instead a nearby bang caused both man to wince, and while Steve's all of sudden realarmed cop-mode immediatly started following the bang to its source with his ears, Jesse once more flinched violately. It seemed to to have been a very wrong movement since the pain that spread in his chest within parts of a second felt deadening. Nothing else hurt anymore, just his chest, his chest burned, throbbed and convulsed all at the same time, leaving Jesse no chance to breath whatsoever flatly. His lungs refused to fill with air, as much as he tried, as much he clutched his hands around his chest, it wouldn't help.

Though his ears were still ringing from the shot, Steve could hear the struggeling desperate gasps from his friend and was at his side soon enough, not daring to turn his worried expressions away from his friend's painfully grimacing features. "Jess? What's the matter?", he inquired hastily.

Jesse was almost unable to to speak and when he did so, it was nothing more but a tortured whispering. "I...can't...breath..."

To be continued... 


	7. Chapter 6

Oh gosh, I'm sooooo sorry, I really got over updaiting this time. I'm just doing an intership at the local radio station and what can I say, it's an absorbing and demanding job, so I'm always dead-tired when I get home. Anyways, thank you so much for the reviews. Sorry for the cliffhanger as well, but....I just love them. Oh, and, you'll see Mr Can't Get Used To Waiting For Back Up did call...it's just the question if it will help.

**************

Harris' hand still trembled from pulling the trigger. He wasn't used to guns, he had often heard one being fired, however, he had never done it himself. He peered down onto the street, saw the red-blue lights circling on the tops of the police cars which framed the road among him. The sharpshooters were aiming with their weapons at a point where they assumed the shot to have sounded from. Harris had found himself becoming so nervous that a warning shot had seemed as a good idea to him. Yet, he knew already that he was stuck. There was no way out.

Mark and Tanis Archer cautiously robbed over the pavement, facing each other glad to find themselves being okay. By the time the bullet had whizzed through the air, they had thrown themselves to the ground, anxiously expecting more to come. But there weren't any other shots, a fact that relieved Mark at least a bit. So far the weapon that Harris was obviously in possession of had been fired only once at the police men on the street. That meant that it had never been fired at Jesse or Steve. However, they still were in there, both of them, both of his sons, surgorrate or real were kept in there and Mark had no idea whether they were fine or not. 

Tanis Archer stumbled to her feet and helped the older doctor up then. "You okay?", she inquired and he answered with a, yet slight, nod. In the meantime Tanis had started to doubt her decision to bring Mark here had been right. But when the precinct that received no further sign from Steve, after he'd called from his car, saying that he had an adress where he would find Harris, she had simply felt that she had to inform Mark about it. Maybe she had just wanted to feel a bit more save, too. She was worried about her partner, hell, she even worried about Travis and she had hoped for Mark's sharp mind to work something out how they could get Jesse and Steve out of there. But she should have known better than that. Ever since he had arrived, Mark had only been staring upwards on the top floors with an apathetic glance in his eyes as if he waited for the wizard of Oz to appear in the cloudy sky and advise him what to do next. So the minutes had passed, Tanis waiting for Mark, Mark waiting for old Ozzy and nothing had happened. But the bang seemed to have awakened their senses again.

Mark had to admit that he probably hadn't been able to give the help Tanis had hoped to get from him. He was cursing himself for not seeing any of this coming, damnit, he knew his son, he should have known what Steve was up to. He could have prevented all this. Not only what had happened to Steve, also what Jesse was going through. Jesse had only left the hospital because he had felt that he wasn't wanted there anymore. Not by the administration, not by the staff, not by the patients and not by his friends. Mark looked into the sky, small rays of light were shining through the huge gray clouds that had formed over LA during the past hour or so, it would surely start raining soon. '_If I had listened to Jesse, we maybe wouldn't be_ _here..'_ Mark thought sadly.

The shot ranging out had sent a shudder down his spine, for a moment his heart had missed a beat. And to be exact, he hadn't thrown himself to the floor, Tanis had. Mark inwardly sighed heavily, hearing the bullet banging on the metal bodywork of a police car. No one had been hurt. Not yet. 

Getting back to his feet, Mark decided that something had to be done before the next shot probably hit another, less resistable aim. Like a human being for example. All of sudden looking quite determined, he glanced at Tanis and at the same time pulled out his cellphone. 

"Dr Sloan, there is no phone in there!", she reminded him, sensing to know what he was up to.

He, however, shook his head and for a moment she meant to see that typical Sloan grinning –friendly, yet somewhat knowing-it-all- hushing over his face. "If Steve still has his cellphone, there is phone in there..."

Tanis raised an eyebrow. She should have known that, how come that she hadn't wasted a thought about Steve's cellphone? But, so it crossed her mind, that was why they all loved Steve's dad for. Being an excellent theorist as much as a practice, Mark had the talent to think in every possible direction. He always thought of the most complicated solution to something, yet, never ruled out the easiest one. And mostly he was the one finding the hint in front everybody's noses. Where all the experienced police men got lost in traces, Mark had the right clue. A spontaneous idea which proved to be exactly what they needed. Tanis only prayed that this was no exception.

*************

Jesse gasped, his face twisted with pain. As much as he wanted to, he found it hardly possible to respond to Steve's gentle callings which should bring him back to consciousness. He was now lying on his side, this time the rough wood among him didn't bother him. He was only feeling the pressure in his chest. The pain that seemed to have taken all his other senses, he could barely see something, Steve's words echoed in his head as a pointless razzle dazzle of louds, it was as though he was drowning. 

Steve swallowed his sickness that almost overwhelmed him at the sight of Jesse's lips turning slightly blue. "Jesse!", he whispered, noticing rather surprisedly that his voice shivered as though he was about to cry. Indeed, Steve's throat hurt from the big lump that seemed to be stuck there while he tried everything in his might to prevent Jesse from passing out. Carefully he slapped his friend's face, every time he did so feeling the sticky, halfly dried blood adapting to his hands. "Jess, don't dare to leave me alone here now!"

Jesse felt the urge to cough, still he was afraid of what it would possibly do. When he finally was in no state to supress it any longer, he was surprised that in the first second it seemed to steal away some of the hurt. Then, however, he horrorfiedly noticed what had actually happened.

Steve cried out, not really loud, yet, for the normally so straight lieutenant it was nearly hysterical. He had been kneeling in front of his friend again whilst trying to keep him awake. So his knees were the first parts of his body to notice the red liquid touching them, as Steve stared in pure shock at his retching friend. Out of Jesse's mouth was coming an eruption of blood that flooded the floor in front of him and colored Steve's jeans. Steve closed his eyes, partly because he wasn't sure if he could stand the sight of his blood covered friend any longer without vomitting, partly because he had to think. Quickly. It would be pointless to try to get of here, Harris would notice him and then probably kill him. Harris had shot at somebody outside. Maybe they were finally there and he had panicked. But even if back-up had arrived they didn't seem to be in hurry to come in. Steve could hardly hold it against them. They were just following the orders which would probably be something like _"the most_ _important matter is to keep the hostages save, so no one will do something thoughtless, for a start we will be waiting"._ But waiting was nothing Steve needed now. He needed to do something.

"Harris!!", he shouted, not knowing if the desperation had driven him nuts already or if this was really the smartest thing to do. After all, Jesse's state was Harris' so called "merit". 

Harris came. He seemed to have been very near the door, maybe he had even been about to come in anyway. "What?!", he yelled, obviously far more nervous than he had been earlier. That was sign enough for Steve to know that back up had really arrived outside. 

Harris stopped dead at the sight of the dark-red carpet that covered the floor. He hadn't been expecting to see something like that and he didn't know where it had suddenly come from.

Steve glared accusingly at him. "He's coughing blood! For how long are you intending to play that game for God's sake?!"

Harris had recovered already from the sudden shock. Now he almost felt delighted. He liked the doctor much better this way. 

"Damnit, let him go! If you want, you can keep me here, but please let him go!", Steve felt like begging, though he didn't sound like it. It sounded like an order.

Whatever it was, it didn't work. Harris simply shook his head. "No way! So far it looks as though none of us is going to leave this building without being carried out in a box. And I have no intention to change that plan." He had made his plan. His decision. If this was what it cost to take revenge, he would pay the price. His life wasn't worth living anymore anyway. 

Steve cellphone ringed into the stunned silence. 

Harris frowned. "What's that?"

Steve lifted an eyebrow. "Probably the police. They will want to talk to you. And I suggest that you take that call. For your own good."

Harris was reluctant, but finally he swayed his head, indicating his 'okay'. "You take it!", he ordered, pulling the gun out of his belt again.

Steve pulled out his phone, never lifting his look from Jesse who still groaned from time to time, but so far that was the only active sign of him still being alive. 

"Sloan?"

"Steve, thank God, it's you!", Mark couldn't help but crying out frantically.

Steve sighed. It was good to hear his father's voice. A doctor's voice.

"Are you and Jesse okay?", Mark asked, feeling his heart sinking as a small pause occuring until Steve answered. 

"I'm fine...but Jesse is hurt! He has problems breathing and has been coughing blood..."

Mark took a heavy breath, trying hard to surpress the images that were rushing through his mind. "Okay, Steve, you need to listen to me now! Keep him calm, roll him on the side, make sure that he doesn't crunch. Tell him to breath as flatly as he can! Keep his head up and try to make him stay awake...that's important, he needs to stay awake somehow, okay? We will get you out of here, I promi...Steve?"

Harris had snatched the cellphone out of Steve's hand already, but Steve had heard the commands his father had shouted through the receiver. 

"Harris speaking, what do you want?", Harris asked icily, giving Mark a weak impression of how it was to be with him in one room.

"This is doctor Sloan, Mr. Harris? What are you up to?"

Harris frowned. "A doctor are you? Don't tell me you're a shrink! I don't want to lay down on anybody's couch, okay?! Get a cop on the phone, I will talk to him!" His tone was shivering, anybody could tell from listening to this talk, that Harris was far beyond nervous. He was frightened and probably desparate. A combination which could prove to be fatal.

"Mr. Harris, I'm not a 'shrink'...", Mark answered, running a trembling hand through his white hair. "I'm the Head of Internal Medicine at the Community General Hospital.." He heard how Harris snorted dismissingly at the mention of the CGH. However, he continued, forming each sentence with an amount of prudency. "The only reason why I'm talking to you is that you are holding my son and a colleague of mine hostage..."

Standing behind Mark, Tanis chewed on her nails. That could have been a mistake. To admit a relation with the victims usually brought you in a defensive position, a position which most criminals used shamelessly. 

Harris looked down at the men to his feet. The moaning doctor and the cop, crouching next to his friend. He still held his weapon pointed at them to make sure no one would try anything stupid, even though it didn't look like Dr Travis was still moving at all. Harris grinned, remembering that man standing in the door of the waiting room in the hospital, saying that he was sorry. Now Harris had the feeling that Travis was _really_ sorry. A wave of calmness suddenly washed over him. He would get his revenge. And there was nothing those people could do about it.

"Well, some nice colleagues do you have...", he snarled into the phone, his voice replaying less emotion than before.

Mark sighed. "I know what you're thinking, Harris. But you've got the wrong person in there. Dr Travis didn't kill your son..."

"What kinds of evidence do you have?", Harris inquired, cop-like.

Mark's hand formed a fist that hit the police car top slightly. Everybody demanded evidence. People only believed what they saw. After all, this was Los Angeles, Hollywood, the town of dreams, unreality, a town where people ate gossip for breakfast and rumors for lunch. One should have thought, facing this willingness to buy anything a stupid society journalist was able to imagine and write a story about, that people put a bit more faith in words. On the other hand, Mark knew this was the reason why he couldn't expect anybody to believe anything without having the facts on hand. A world where everything could as much be real as a fake, people wanted to know. Not believe. Faith in anything or anybody was, as MTV would have probably put it, "out". 

Brandon Dawn had wanted evidence, Walter Day had wanted them and shockedly Mark realized, that for one awful second even he himself would not have believed the words that he was telling Mr. Harris right now. 'What do you have?', Harris had asked.

Well, Mark would tell him what he had. "You have my word!"

Even an insensitive man like Harris was able to make difference between a simple lame promise and the words of a man who never lied. And Mark didn't lie. 

The tone of absolute faith that sounded from the receiver kind of damaged Harris's ability to enjoy the prospect of his revenge. His insecurity slowly came back. But he still didn't give in. "Why should I trust you?"

'Good question', thought Mark. 'I almost betrayed one of my closest friends, I couldn't hinder my son to endanger himself, I can't protect the people I love.' He lowered his head. He had no idea of what might have been a good point. "Mr. Harris, I understand that you want the man, who killed your son, to be punished. That is something everybody understands. But you surely don't want innocent people to get hurt, do you?"

"Why do you think I would hurt anybody who was innocent?", Harris snapped, his again shivering fingers far too close to the trigger of his gun.

"I know you wouldn't!", Mark replied, maintaining his calmness which was partly enabled by the fact that he couldn't see the gun that swayed dangerously over Steve's and Jesse's heads. He sensed that Harris was holding a gun now since there was no sound from the background, nothing but a frightened silence. Sometimes Mark meant to hear something that sounded like a uncoordinated gasp for air, but maybe it was also just a static sound on the cellphone connection. "I know you are a proud man, I know you want revenge for your son, but I tell you again, you have the wrong man in there. Dr Travis didn't have anything to do with Jimmy's death...and if you give me one hour, I'll prove that!", he stated finally, glancing at the face of his watch. One hour...he had no idea how he should do this. But from the symptoms Steve had described him, Jesse had either a punctured lung or stomach, whatever it was, if that wasn't fixed soon, he would die of internal blood loss.

And one hour was the very least Mark could give himself. Jesse was a fighter, not one of the obvious sort, but he belonged to the kind of people who were in possession of a great emotional strength. A stubborness that, once activated, seemed indestructable and entirely pushed the will to pull through anything, no matter what. Making this quite courageous promise to Harris, Mark had to rely on this strength of which he knew his friend had it. He had witnessed it in the past, he only hoped that it would do its best to save Jesse now, while he –Mark- would do the other part. Somehow. 

Harris was for a moment too stunned to answer anything. Though he hated to admit it, he was impressed by Dr Sloan's way of handling the situation. The convincement in his voice, the finality, with which this last statement had been made, had a tone that insecured him as much as it made him curious. He tried to face Travis, tried to work with the sensible part of his brain. Did this man look like a killer? Like someone who would murder a child? Due to his only very small knowledge of what killers probably looked like Harris had no idea what to think. But there was something behind Sloan's urgent request that deserved to be respected. That deserved an attempt. Harris didn't even realize how he was giving in slowly. "Okay...", he muttered sternly. "One hour, Dr Sloan...not a second more or else your son and Dr Travis will be history..."

Mark felt his stomach convulsing, yet, he forced himself to whisper an utterly strained "Thank you..." into the receiver. He felt so sick. Harris was certainly the last person who'd have deserved any gratefulness, but there was not much of an alternative. Besides, Mark had other things to worry about. One hour. Dialing a new number on his phone, Mark sent silent prayer to heaven. "Please...help me..." 

***************

Harris closed the cellphone and put it into his pocket. As he looked down, two blue eyes pierced him full of hatred. Steve had leaned back on his heels while his right hand never left the place where he had Jesse's shoulder in a soft, reassuring grib. 

Harris glared down at them. "You have one hour. Enjoy it!", he announced, causing Steve to exhale in relief inaudibly. He had no idea how his father had done it, but he was thankful for it. However, that relaxed second was interrupted by Steve noticing what Harris was obviously up to.

Harris was aiming a kick with his feet...directly at Jesse's chest. It took Steve a second that seemed like an eternity to find out what was going on, but it took him not a third of this time to react to it. Right at the moment when the shoe whizzed down on Jesse's hurtfully shuddering upper body, Steve was in the way. Instead of his friend, Harris' foot rammed into his own solar plexus, causing so much pain that Steve wasn't even able to gasp. He hadn't heard Harris exiting, a cruel comment on his lips, but later Steve could very well imagine what Harris had probably said. Right now he fought against passing out.

Jesse had been aware of people talking next to him all the time. He had never been completely unconsciousness, but when the pain had become all too heavy for him to bear, he had slightly dozed off. To his surprise he had been able to think much clearer in this half-asleep state, for the first time his doctor-mode had taken over. He could hardly breath, his chest hurt at the pure effort to move, two or three of his ribs were definitely broken. It was likely that one of the loose bones had punctured his lung or pierced into another organ. Jesse swallowed. The bitter taste of blood was ruling the nerves on his tongue, but there was still something else, also bitter, but lighter. It could have been gall, he didn't know. But there was no doubt that his chest was seriously wounded and he had internal bleedings.

There was a sudden, very scaring silence around him and for the first time in quite a while, Jesse couldn't feel Steve's hand on his shoulder anymore. Well, he didn't exactly know it was Steve's hand, but he had been aware of a warm touch on his shoulder, something that soothed him a little, letting him know that he was still not alone. Jesse misinterpreted this lack of warmth on his arm as a sure sign that unconsciousness was slowly getting the better part of him. That was something that wasn't to happen. Struggling to open his eyes, Jesse groaned quietly. His view at first was blurry and the very first thing he noticed was a Timberland boot on its way down to him. Without even realizing what was happening, Jesse squeezed his eyes shut again, waiting for the final pain to come, knowing that this would knock him out. To his great surprise, nothing happened. 

ariisH 

He waited another few seconds, believing that the pain was about to overwhelm him, he thought that his body might be so numb that his nerves needed more time to send a message of pain to his brain. Jesse expected the piercing feeling, the throbbing, he practically expected running out of oxygen any moment. But he didn't feel anything, apart from the pain that was already there. He dared to open his eyes, fearing that he had already passed out and that all his strength to wake up again had gone along with his consciousness.

However, he found that he was still around and Harris seemed to have headed off. And Steve? It hit Jesse like a flash that threw him back into reality. Where was Steve? Jesse cast the room a hazy glance, noticing the penlight on the floor, disgustingly enlightening a sea of blood before him. Jesse didn't need an analysis to know that this was probably his own blood, the same blood that was wettening his shirt. But where was Steve?

Jesse threw a lurking look around, but it was impossible to take in his surroundings when you were lying flatly on the ground. Jesse sighed. He had to move. Inhaling deeply and flinching at the same time, he used his elbow to support his upper body. Immediatly the throbbing was back, as much as the burning that left no chance for him to satisfy his need of fresh air. Jesse's teeth dug deeply into thew flesh of his mouth, but he had so much blood in his mouth that he didn't care. He never recalled how in fact he had managed to push himself up so far, but now he could at least move his head freely.

He noticed a figure that sat leaned against the wall, the limp body edging on Jesse's feet. Jesse blinked. "Steve?", he asked with raspy voice.

Steve's shoulders rose and fell heavily with every struggled breath he took. He had regained some of the functions of his lungs within the past minutes, by now he didn't feel anything but a slight, yet sharp pain. Nevertheless, he had shut his eyes for some seconds and only opened them as he heard a strained worried whisper. Someone was calling him. "I'm here, Jess, everything's alright, don't worry...", he mumbled hoarsely.

"What happened to you?"

"He kicked me...but don't worry, really, it's not that bad...", Steve lied, but could hardly hide the quivering tone in his voice.

Jesse only slowly got what had happened. The kick he had been waiting for...that hadn't been an imagination. Harris had tried to kick him and Steve had thrown himself litterally between them. Before he could say anything, Steve had thrown a look at his friend and realized as much astonished as shocked that the young man had backed himself up into a halfly upright position. 

"Jess, please lay back down!", he said strictly, hoping it hadn't sounded to harshly.

If it had, Jesse hadn't taken any notice of it. He simply stared at his friend in silent awe, stammering something into the space that Steve didn't understand. "Steve..you..."

Steve had no idea if that pause was a result of another painful attack from Jesse's ribs or if it was just due to his friend's obviously increasing confusion. "What, Jesse?"

"You...you...", Jesse babbled, then called himself to order and attempted to produce a proper sentence. "He...Harris had kicked me, if you hadn't..." He struggled to sit up and managed it with a even now amazing celerity, which was -as Steve realized once again far too late, typical for the young man. Jesse hated settlement in any way and this attitude had become a fast part of his personality and also his movements. He never held still, he always seemed to be in motion. That was only understandable, guessed Steve. Looking at Jesse, a small, boyish and youthful man, a lot of people surely felt the urge to protect him or –for the worse extreme- thought they could treat him like he didn't deserve any kind of respect. A decisive, even if sometimes a bit over-enthusiastic, quickness was his freedom, his agility was his potential for being invisible. 

Steve had slightly smiled at Jesse's child-like astonishment, however he was not very pleased by seeing his friend suddenly sitting more or less crunchedly in a very upright posture next to him. "Damnit, Jess, lay down!", he commanded, following the instructions his father had given to him.

Jesse threw him an almost begging look. "I don't want to. I will pass out and then...", he trailed off, fearing to admit that he was scared of losing consciousness. He didn't want to be kicked again. And he didn't want his friend to be hurt again, just because he couldn't pay and attention. He had caused so much trouble already. 

The older man shook his head. "I won't let you pass out!", he promised.

"But I...", Jesse wanted to argue, but a sudden wave of pain interrupted him. Moaning heavily, he fell to the side, where Steve caught him and thereby voluntarily slid aside, giving Jesse space to lie more or less comfortably on the ground. Remembering his dad's advise, he took off his jacket to have something to put under Jesse's head. "You'd better breath flatly...and don't crouch", he added as though it was written on a do's and don'ts list. 

Jesse's halfly closed eyes flew open and a spark of mischievousness was to be recognized in them. "Thanks, doctor...", he grinned slyly. 

"You're welcome!", Steve retorted, gritting his teeth to surpress any groaning. 

Jesse all of sudden grew serious again. "Harris should have kicked me, not you...this is all my fault, I'm sorry."

A sad smile twisted Steve's face, its bitterness bigger than any pain could be. That was why Jesse had been so incoherent. He was wondering why Steve had done this. Even after all those years, Jesse Travis still seemed to have difficulties getting that he deserved to be cared about as much as he did for his friends. Steve shook his head in silent disbelief. "Do you really think I would have sat there and watched Harris kicking you to death?"

Jesse didn't answer quickly. Only some time later, he mumbled: "I don't know, I just thought...after all that mess I..."

Steve rolled his eyes. "My gosh, will you finally get it. Nothing of this is your fault, nothing, no-thing, comprehende? Harris is the rotten dolt here, not you, okay?! He has no right to hurt you or anybody else!" Then he said more reservedly: "If anything did happen to you, my dad or Amanda, I would never forgive myself. I will protect you..."

Then he shot his friend a watchful look. "Besides, I need you to go through the stock list of Bob's with me next week, so don't even think of quitting that easily..."

Jesse's eyes glimmed with mock happiness. "Well, I feels great to know that your friends rely on you..."

Their careful laughter was ended by a grim look at Steve's wristwatch. Different to Jesse, he had kept his and time seemed to be racing on it. Steve cursed as he read the face of his watch. "15 minutes passed..." 

He earned a questioning look from Jesse, who only vaguely remembered hearing something about "You've got one hour!" in his semi-awake state. His problems with breathing had come back with a heavier impact. This time not only his chest was torturing him, but Jesse also felt suddenly feverish. He exhaled loudly, then only way he could make sure to breath flatly enough. Seeing his pale face, Steve couldn't help but gently stroking his friend's –his little brother's- cheeks. Touching the clammy skin, Steve felt water on his hands. He wasn't sure if it was sweat or a tear and he didn't ask. He could feel his friend's pain and angst and also had his share of it. 

Even without explaining it, both men instinctively knew that they were running out of time. 


	8. Chapter 7

Hey, kinda early this time! Well, to everybody who wondered what they were going to do to find the killer, here the answer. Thank you very much for the reviews, they are wonderful, each single one of them! So here we go for the next part...

(Oh, btw, I've not the slightest idea of basketball. Except for there is a ball and a basket. Everything I know about it is from the posters and newspaper articles my friend's pinned onto her wall. So I don't know if I'm right with everything, therefore I beg you this time not only to ignore my not-knowing any English, but also my not-knowing any basketball stuff. But you may read the rest of the story, though. ;) *g*)

Please R&R

************

"One hour! Can you explain to me how you wanna do that?!", Tanis Archer inquired, turning on the engine of her car. Next to her, Mark had just ended his call to Amanda, who was at the CGH, and shook his head in a tough manner. 

"I have no idea, Tanis...", he stated plainly.

She rolled her eyes and kept both of her hands obsessively clunched around the wheel. "That's impossible...", she muttered with a mix of anger and fear in her voice, making sure he could hear her.

"It has to be possible!", he replied sternly. "Jesse's injured, he won't make it any longer!"

"Then why not storm the building? Harris is too scared, seeing the sharpshooters will give him the final blow he needs", she argued, taking the cars that hurried out of their police-car way so much for granted, that she didn't pay any attention to the road.

Mark glanced into the rear mirror, then back on the road, then onto his watch. 52 minutes. "Harris might be scared, but he is also desperate."

"He just wanted to vent his frustration. After all his son has died. But do you really think that he wants to die in there? I don't believe so..."

Mark cast her a short look with his blue earnest eyes. "You believe the wrong. After all Harris is still a father..." 

Tanis waited for more, but it never came.

*************

"I still can't believe he really did agree to that! I mean, how does he wanna do that without using witchcraft?!", Alex Martin mused nervously, scratching his ear as he often did when he didn't know what else to do.

Amanda herself had a bad feeling about it when she said:"Mark knows what he is doing..." _Hopefully_, she added mentally and tried to hide her doubtful expression from the young intern. However, she didn't waste a second longer with her nagging worries and was determined to do something that would help Jesse and Steve. "We need to help Mark..."

"How!?", Alex exploded, his rational thinking heavily affected by the quickness of following events. He wasn't even sure if he had got everything the pathologist had just told him under her breath. "We don't have proofs, we don't know where to start, we don't even really know what's going on..."

"Yeah, and making a list of everything we don't know won't bring us any closer to the real murderer of Jimmy Harris!", Amanda argued back. "We must take what we have..."

Alex let out an aggressively shaken breath and calmed himself down. "Which would be?..."

"Jimmy's mother, Mrs Harris. I suggest you call her...I will go and talk to one of Jesse's patients. A Phillip Morton..."

"What makes this Morton more or less useful than any other of Dr Travis' patients?", Alex inquired impatiently.

Amanda shrugged. "His chart was the only one that Jesse didn't come to fill in and sign during his rounds..."

"Well, probably he was having other stuff on mind. Amanda, that means nothing!"

She gave him a look. "Or everything...we have to try it!"

He threw his arms into the air, somewhat helplessly. "And if we're just wasting our time with those guys, Steve and Jesse are really really deep in the soup!", he yelled, his young urge to get going evident in his voice.

"Well, what I really like about you, Dr Martin, is your indestructable optimism!", Amanda replied with sharp sarcasm, casting him a glance that didn't offer any room for objections.

***************

A slight knock on the door tore Phil out of his dozings. Even though his eyes were tired, he could see the beauty in the face of the young Afro-American woman who entered the room and almost immediatly filled it with a certain warmth of humanity. Something that easily vanished in hospital rooms, but was needed more than anything else here.

She wore a white coat and held a chart in her hands, but Phillip was sure that her pure smile was able to heal. "Mr Morton?", she asked carefully and he answered with a nod.

She came closer to the bed. "I'm Dr Amanda Bentley", she introduced herself.

A fragile grin hushed over the older man's face. "Amanda...", he repeated, as though he was enjoying it. "The lovely one", he remarked suddenly.

She raised her eyebrows. "What?"

"Amanda is Latin and means 'the lovely one'", he answered kindly and winked at her. "Are you friends with Dr Travis?", he interrogated, leaving Amanda kind of stunned how such a suffering man could be so less caught up in his own pain and rather think of something like that.

"Yes...I am...how did you...", she stammered, reaching after a chair behind her.

"I was wondering when one of you would show up...I'm only happy that it's not that horrible lawyer who is gonna question me....or that other guy, what's his name again...Darn, Dain..."

"Dawn..."

"Yes, right. He and his lawyer stormed in right when Jesse was treating me and they threw him out, just like that..." Even though his voice was dry and raspy, Amanda could clearly recognize that disgust in Morton's tone. The sick looking man made an attempt of shaking his head in indignation. "They didn't treat him very nicely...", he mumbled, then suddenly threw Amanda another look. "But you surely had other questions on mind, please ask..."

"You answered most of them already. So Dr Travis did tell you what they were holding against him?" The pathologist was gnawing her lip. Morton knew that Jesse'd been expelled and she saw no point in telling him that in the meantime there was more to it that simply saving Jesse's reputation. 

He laughed out shortly and hoarsely. "He really didn't have to. When you're lying flatly on your back all day, you hear a lot of gossip..."

"Did he mention anything or anybody to you that might be able to tell us something that would help Jesse?", Amanda asked, not being able to fight the feeling that there was more about this man than she could guess.

Morton thought for a second, then shook his head. "He seemed somewhat devasted to me, but he wouldn't say much that would help you. I'm sorry..."

Amanda stood up, smiling sadly and friendly at the same time. She liked this man, he really seemed to care. When he raised his hand to take hers, she didn't hesitate a moment before taking his thin fingers into her soft, young hand. He watched her pleadingly. "Amanda...Please take care of Jesse. He wouldn't do any harm to anybody. He's a good doctor, he always was a better one than I used to be...", Phillip added regretfully. That said he found the pretty lady staring at him astonishedly. 

"Does that mean, you met him before?", she asked, her dark sparkeling eyes meeting his own glazed focus.

He chuckeld knowingly. "He didn't tell you? Before he came here, he was my assigned intern...back in Minnesota, you know?"

Amanda took a deep breath. "No, I didn't know that..."

The older man grinned shyly. He couldn't believe Jesse had never told anybody what had happened then. Slowly Morton's memories drifted back into the past, crossed the lines of things that were long ago and far away. It was logical that he -Morton himself- had never lost a word about it. Even if he had wanted to confess it to anybody, Morton didn't have anyone he trusted so much that he would have told him or her. The doctor had always been a loner. After his daughter's death even more than before. But Jesse..."He hasn't changed a bit...", Phillip mumbled to himself, giving Amanda no clue what he meant by that. 

**************

"Dr Travis seemed to be a nice person to me", Mrs Harris explained through thick sobs that sounded three times as loud in the receiver. "But I could see that he didn't like my decision about Jimmy...I only had to look into his eyes. He didn't get as mad as the other doctor, but I knew he was angry. He thought I was a bad mother...", she mumbled, sounding hauntedly as though she was thinking the same.

Alex frowned in the meantime. "The other doctor?"

"Yeah, a tall one with brown hair...Pads was his name or something like that..I'm sorry..."

"Potts...", Alex repeated more to himself, drawing a conclusion quickly. "You said he was mad..."

"Well, sort of. He screamed at me and asked me how I could do such a thing...he was probably right..."

"Don't say something like that", Alex soothed the seemingly distracted woman. A short look at his watch told him that he had to hurry a bit. "Mrs Harris, I thank you, you have been a big help. I'm really sorry about your son." He said and felt how empty those words were. Of course, he had meant it, but he didn't know this women personally. For him, this was a tragedy similar to a lot of others he had to face everyday. He sounded lame.

************

Mark and Tanis met Amanda at the reception desk. When the young woman had spotted them, rushing through the elevator doors, she sprinted towards them with a meltingly worried gaze on her face. Mark felt roughly affected by the intensity with which her eyes sought for reassurance in his, as she asked:"How are Steve and Jesse?"

The older doctor also felt his heart sinking into his knees when he couldn't reply anything satisfying. "I don't know", he admitted and moisted his lips to reveal the next, even worse part of information. "I could talk to Steve over the phone, he said that Jesse was injured. That's why we need to hurry..."

"Did you find out anything?", Tanis took lead of the discussion, knowing that pointless bits and pieces wouldn't help anybody right now. Amanda shook her head. She had no doubt that Morton had been telling the truth and the fact that he knew Jesse from earlier was no trace here. Morton was far too weak to get out of his bed, he couldn't be hiding a lot about the present events and he had wanted to help Jesse. The disappointment and rising despair in Mark's and Tanis' pressed sighs were evident, so she added a small, however, maybe deciding, fact. "Alex wanted to talk to Mrs Harris and see if she knows something..."

While talking, they had started marching towards the reception and by the time Alex had put down the receiver again, they had reached him. Looking up, he found three eager pairs of eyes staring at him, their mere concentrated expressions telling him more about the seriousness of the situation than he wanted to have his share of. 

The grasping realization in the young man's gaze even enlargened their urge to know, but Alex seemed unable to speak as though he was fearing his own words. The intern's mind was rattering. _Was that possible? Potts had been at Med School, one year lower than him. Nice guy, inconspicious, but self-confident. He wouldn't...would he?..._

Alex felt as though time was pushing its thumb into his spine, his suspicion was wearing him down. He didn't have _the choice_ to consider that he might be jumping to conclusions too fast, he didn't have _the time_. 

Drawing a deep breath, he finally met Mark's, Amanda's and Tanis' eyes. "You remember Michael Potts?..."

**************** 

The ball bounced onto the ground in short, anticipating intervalls while the audience held their breath. With their eyes they starred at the round brown ball that continiously left the player's broad hands and then jumped back into them. This nerv-wrecking ordeal was repeated for two or three times. Then Dirk Novitzky stopped dead in his motions for a second, focussed on the basket and all of sudden raised his enormous height, pushed his feet up from the free shot line and directed the basketball forwards with his long right arm. The ball sailed through the air and finally touched the periphery of the basket, where it seemingly was trying to regain its balance, before it fell into the round circle with a quiet drop_. _

The doctor's lounge echoed from the moans and swears while about ten pairs of interns' shoulders sacked simultaneously with those of the LA Lakers and whose present audience. In the meantime the fans of the Dallas Mavericks had broken into a distinct jubilation which was, however, only short lived.

Though being protected by two Mavericks, Jamal Sampson had started an amazingly fast contra over the left boundary line. Having crossed good two thirds of the field, he seemed unsure of what to do next since he found himself running against a wall of Dallas players who were blocking his way.

"Yeah, Samp, you show them!", spurred Ben Wilson, intern in the pediatry, and jumped up from his chair.

"Hey, I'm not here to watch your butt!!", snapped Barry Townsend, whose eyesight was disturbed by Wilson's sudden outbreak in front of the TV, and brutally dragged his colleague out of his view.

Sampson appeared to have heard Benny. Obviously coming to a quick decision, he whirrled around and ducked, so that the two Mavericks who had been about to grab the ball, practically stumbled into the off. Sampson, however, saw his chance to score when he found himself on free way to the opponents' basket. So he was coming up speed suddenly, sprinted forwards and jumped. Under the chants from the Lakers fans' tribune, he virtually flew into the air, turned halfway around and landed a well-placed slam-dunk before he slid back to the ground again, grinning triumphingly.

The audience, including the one in front the TV in the lounge, went wild, applauded like mad, shouted their souls out of their bodies. 

Between the roars from his friends and colleagues. Michael heard a whisper, directly next to his ear. 

"Dr Potts, I need to talk to you. It's important..." 

Within the general good mood, Mark had managed to sneak in, unseen, and now, having the young first year intern in tow, the two of them also got out without anyone taking notice of them.

**************

The nearby recreation room was empty when Potts and Mark entered it. Not entirely empty since Alex, Tanis and Amanda were already waiting, but their presence was nothing compared with the mob of inters whose curses and screams of happiness were still audible through the shut door.

"Dr Potts, we need to ask you a few questions...", Mark started, hoping to sound insuspicously.

The young man with the brown curly hair hung his head. "Dr Sloan, I won't say anything that would bring Dr Travis into trouble, okay? I don't know what he has done to Jimmy, but he is a good doctor and no matter what you believe..."

Mark sensed that Potts wasn't even lying in that respect. Jesse was a good doctor. But looking at this young man, hearing this euphorical, self-sacrificing speech, he couldn't help but feeling that dealing with Potts let them deal with someone who had considered himself to be a better doctor. Better than his tutor, better than every other doctor, probably better than every other man on this planet. A someone who had much more in common with his younger self than Mark wanted to admitt.

As he was hit by a wave of regrets again, the older man was happy for Amanda to continue with a far more self-confident voice than he would have been able to press through his throat right now.

"Oh, _we_ don't believe that Jesse has done anything to Jimmy, apart from trying to save his life!", the pathologist stated, folding her arms over her chest. 

Potts looked confusedly. "You...you don't?" The knowledge of that definitely threw him out of line and he suddenly began to stutter. "But...but the...then I don't understand...how I can...help y...you..."

"For a start you could confess", Tanis invited him. Her cop-mode had been gaining for the better part of her for a long time and she was tired of this game. 

Once it had been spoken out, a dangerous silence filled the air in the room as no one even dared to move.

Potts was the first one to react by laughing out shortly and nervously. "What?"

Mark sighed inwardly. Tanis had taken two steps in one and saying he appreciated that would have been a lie. Though he himself felt how the thin sand of time was trickling though his shaking fingers while he was wasting his words for someone who shamelessly lied at them, he knew that it would have been saver to lure Potts into a psychological trap.

"You were angry about Mrs Harris making the 'wrong' decision. You thought she was torturing her child. So...you decided to end it...", Alex formed his suggestion that had been burning inside him into a statement.

A crease of madness was emerging on Potts' forehead as well as slight drops of fresh sweat. "I don't have to listen to this!", he hissed and was about to turn around on his heel.

But before he could reach the door, someone adressed him with a short sentiment that hit his nerves. 

"You _killed_ Jimmy Harris!", Mark spoke prudently, knowing what he was doing. Hoping that the psychological trap would snap.

For a moment, Mark could practically feel how Jesse's and Steve's fate was being decided in that moment. The air was thick with suspicion and this was the second when it turned out if it either broke into a thunderstorm or bottled itself up into a huge dark cloud. Either Mark hat aimed well and hit the nerve or not. It was like to moment when you saw a basketball lingering through the space, and you waited in anticipation if it'd hit its goal or not. Except for this wasn't a game.

Michael turned around. His face was paralysed with horror, his expressions gaunt. His brown, usually sparkeling eyes were cloudy as he faced the four of them, still acting as though none of them was actually there.

"I didn't kill him...I...I...I set it right. She did the wrong thing...her son suffered and she...she didn't even notice...I wanted to help." Saying that, he was sitting on the couch, trembling.

Then he looked up, but the way he was gazing at them, made Amanda think that he was talking to his own appearance in an invisible mirror. The pleading gesture looked as though Michael Potts was demanding an absolution from his own bad conscience.

The young doctor focussed on the blue, sad eyes in Dr Sloan's ash-gray face. "I wanted to help!", he repeated, his watery look seeking for something like forgiveness in the other one's expressions.

All of sudden, Mark did something none of them had expected. Maybe he sensed that Potts wouldn't be of much use anymore when he broke down. However, as he bent down and gently squeezed Michael's shoulder also the Head of Internal Medicine seemed to be looking into an imaginary mirror. "It's okay...I know, you wanted to help...", he said merely.

Michael ran one hand over his wet face. "I thought no one would ask questions. I mean, there was no need to...I'm sorry if I damaged Dr Travis reputation. "

"Actually", Tanis said, "this isn't about reputations anymore."

At Potts' frown, Mark was back in reality again and nodded acknowledging the Lieutenant's statement. "She is right. This is about doctor Travis' life...", he confirmed, and all of sudden felt the weight of his wrist watch again.

From the other room thundering racious singing and a collection of rude words penetrated their ears. The LA Lakers had lost the game in the very last minute. 


	9. Chapter 8

Here the chapter you've all been waiting for. Hope it was worth the anticipation. Sorry for the all the wrong spellings 'n' stuff, but I'm glad that you like the story, though. :) Hopefully all you guys who celebrate it have had a nice Thanksgiving! Please R&R.

***********

Back in their prison Steve sat leaned against the wall and listened to the sounds of darkness that surrounded him. Everything was quiet, but Jesse's ever so shallow breathing was able to fill the air with the subliminal anguish that ran through each single catch of oxygen he took. Steve had noticed some time ago that the pauses between those breaths became longer while his own heart started pounding through his chest in every second he couldn't hear the air striking his friend's teeth and causing a soft whizzing. The older man still rested his one hand on what he knew was the younger man's shoulder, but as he realized, another lump forming in his throat and wandering up his gullet, it could as well have been as stone. His skin cold and his body as good as motionless, the only thing, that seemed to save Jesse from sliding into the apathy of death, was a constant tremor, accompanying his struggles to breathe.

For once in that horrible hour Steve guessed horrorfiedly that his friend had stopped breathing totally as the background sound of a slightly thin whistle suddenly lacked. But switching on the little flash light again, Steve found that his friend had only stopped breathing through his mouth and caught his air through the nose, which looked more painful on the one hand, yet, at least more regular on the other. The lieutenant only used the penlight to glance at his watch and take notice that again five minutes had faded into the relentless nothing of time while there wasn't anything happening. Apart from that, Steve let the room remain in the blackness, partly because he wanted to spare himself the sight of his beaten friend and then because he had the feeling that Jesse's eyes always clouded with the leaden will to give in to his weakness, that was completely dominating his body at least physically, as soon as light stroke his pupills. So Steve covered the glowing with his hands as soon as he'd switched the light on and then directed the rays onto the face of his watch, careful to shield Jesse from the blinding beams by holding his arm so, that it hid the watch and only he himself could still read it.

Jesse continued to swin in a sea of hallucination and total awareness, whereby his dreams always seemed more real than dreams were supposed to be and reality itself was always locked up in a tight cloth of grayness.

In one of his feverish imaginations, the young doctor found himself standing in an endless seeming corridor, framed with doors on both sides of it. The doors were all shut, and no matter how hard Jesse tried to enter any room that might be hidden behind them, he couldn't force them open. Sometimes a door opened as soon as he had stopped trying to open it and a kid exited, quickly crossed the hall and vanished in one of the other rooms. Jesse never really recognized the child, but he had seen immediatly that he –or she, he wasn't even sure if it was boy or a girl- was carrying his watch around.

Feeling how he was slowly becoming a victim of his own impatience, Steve concentrated on a more practical challenge than to sit on the floor and cursing inwardly. Instead of that, he was keeping his promise and called Jesse or cautiously, very cautiously ruttled him as soon as he realized that his friend's expressions were overshadowed by the outward signs of what Steve believed was a nightmare. As an emotion itself, it was hard to put an finger on what it was that lay like a mask over his friend's face. Maybe it was fear. Or guilt. Confusion? All Steve could tell that it was something unsettled that continued to shake up the young man's subconsciousness while Jesse's eyelids fluttered from opening to closing and his blood covered, swollen lips moved as though he was attempting to talk to hallucinations.

Knowing that this was the sight that was expecting him, Steve was reluctant to switch on the lamp again. But during the last period of darkness, Jesse's trembling had become so hard that Steve had problems feeling the calming rising and falling of his best friend's shoulders by only touching them He couldn't help it, he needed to see something to make sure Jesse was okay. '_Well_', Steve thought bitterly to himself, _'"okay" as in "not dead"_'.

What first sounded like the tearing noise of a squealing door in Jesse's dream, slowly transformed into a voice. Jesse moaned. This ritual was wrecking him. Drifting away, hearing someone calling him, knowing that he had to find and fight his way back to the reality, where nothing but pain and cold would hit him. And then opening his eyeslids which felt as though rocks were bound to them, sliding out of the semi-awareness back into the world where he only wanted to scream.

This time Jesse suffocated a whimper of which he had the feeling it would kill him once it had escaped him. He couldn't go on. As much as he wanted to, it was impossible. He had used all the strength he had, emotional as much as physical, starting with Jimmy Harris, that stupid fight with Mark, the involuntary reunion with his past in Minnesota, the humiliation, the self-doubts, the hits, kicks, burns, blows from Mr Harris...they had all grown bigger than him, his will...and his faith. Like the blood that trickled out of his ruptured lip, everything that kept him alive was just a rest while the main part had already gone, leaving nothing but the little voice in Jesse's head and his best friend's hand on his shoulder.

Seeing how the color of Jesse's face more and more paled, Steve's despair grew. In ten minutes the curfew Harris had set for his dad and Tanis was over. He had no idea if that was good or bad and he had the feeling that he wouldn't find out until then. Either he didn't know what would help him not losing Jesse, but he had to do something. He was losing him, he knew that, with each nuance that Jesse's skin came closer to the numb gray of the stones that surrounded them, his friend's firmly clinging will was broken slowly. 

Jesse wanted to zoom out those voices, his internal one as much as the one he identified again as Steve's, he just wanted to let go. He wouldn't make it. For God's sake, he was far over being in a critical state. So why was he still here?

"Jess, you need to hang on, okay?", Steve insisted, finally deciding to leave the flashlight on.

"I can't...", Jesse heard himself responding with a hoarse whisper.

__

"What does that mean, you can't?! Of course, you can, we both know that!", the little voice _screamed through his head_.

"That's not true, I'm sure you can!...", Steve moisted his lips, but without any success. His mouth remained as dry as a sand pit. "Would be a bad moment to prove me wrong, don't you think?"

"Really, Steve, I...I...", Jesse stuttered, feeling how the layer of water seemed to double over his eyes, blurring his view. "I'm sorry..."

__

"Wow, you really _think that I'd let you off the hook, eh?", the little voice scolded._

"What do you want? Give me a lecture?!", Jesse replied stubbornly.

"Well, maybe. That seems to be the only way to talk some sense into you!"

"What, if I don't want to listen?", Jesse asked.

"You will have to! If you want to give up on yourself, please, but you'll need to get past me for that. I know that you like to ignore me, but I'm stronger than you think!"

"Not strong enough!", Jesse objected. "Not this time. Harris has won. They've all won. I don't care anymore."

"I see...they've all won. The world's against you. No one likes you. That's why Steve is trying everything to keep you alive and Mark convinced Harris that you were innocent and by the way is even putting his own son into the shooting line. I totally agree, no one cares about you."

"That's exactly what I mean...", Jesse attempted to explain. "I only mean trouble for them. They'd be better off without me."

The little voice sighed. "Oh boy,could you finally put that childish behaviour aside?! Do you really think they'd feel better if you were dead? They're doing all this, because they like you. And they believe in you, more than you do actually. Whose opinion does count more for you, Jesse? The opinion of a lunatic guy, who is about to kill you, or your friends' ? Are you so eager to show the people, who love you, that they were mistaken putting faith in you?"

"No...", Jesse mumbled and felt ashamed.

"Then I won't say anything anymore. Give up or go on. It's your choice now."

"No!", Steve gasped as his friend was closing his eyelids. Desperately he reached for the young man's wrist, searching frantically for a pulse which he finally found. But the irregular drumming against Steve's middle and index fingers was no more but the faint idea of what had used to be Jesse's heart beat.

The lump was painfully wandering through his throat. His shoulders tensed as he noticed the salty liquid on his bottom lip. Steve hated himself for crying now, though it was only one tear, maybe two, which even made it down his cheeks before he had himself under rational control again. He wasn't supposed to be crying. He wasn't supposed to give up. Not long ago he had told Jesse that he wouldn't let him down and he had no intention to do so now. 

His friend was still alive. And Steve promised himself he would never allow that the last words his best friend had ever spoken to him should be an apologise.

**************

As much as Michael's knees had been cramped while sitting next to Dr Sloan in the police car, he now guessed that they would give way among him as soon as he exited the vehicle. His wobbly legs were the only sign of him being insecure, inwardly Mike felt an odd certainess about what he wanted to do. 

Maybe he had made a mistake in other people's eyes, he didn't know and it didn't matter to him anymore what others thought. He didn't regret what he had done, but neither he had wanted to broadcast it around, knowing that he would never get the chance to help other persons then. By healing them or –if there was really no other way left- helping them to die. Suffering until you're dead had no point in his opinion. Suffering was nothing anyone should have to go through and death was nothing you had to make a contract about with God. When he had sworn his oath, Mike hadn't wasted a thought about what it would be like, being confronted with those cases. All he had done was repeating a stipulation and he had realized too late that he wouldn't able to practice it. That wasn't medicine, but he only knew it since he had come to meet Mrs Harris. In the back of his mind, Mike had believed that they'd catch him someday. But not this quickly. 

Mark dialled Steve's cellphone number. Secretly he hoped to hear his son's voice answering the call, but Harris had taken the phone outside with himself as he'd left his hostages in their cage of walls. Therefore, Harris was also the one to grab to the receiver, once the phone had ringed next to him on the table.

"Yeah?"

"Mr Harris, this is Dr Sloan..."

A small, yet uncomfortable smile, hushed over the man's face. He almost didn't dare to ask that question, fearing that there was really an answer to it. "Just back in time, doc, I'm impressed. Now, do you have the killer of my son."

"Yes, I have...", Mark replied straightly.

Harris gulped, all his nervosity turning his stomach around. That guy was lying. That was the only explanation. "Don't lie at me, Doc!", he snarled, finding it hard to keep the receiver calm in his trembling hands. 

"I don't, Harris. You're holding my son and my best friend hostage, I wouldn't waste my time lying at you!", Mark hissed, taking deep breaths inbetween to overcome the nauseatic feeling which was paralysing his vocal cords. 

The stress on "my son"echoed in the other man's ears. That was something you didn't mess with. Not your kids. That was a lesson Harris had learned so far. Again he had this feeling of being wrong. That couldn't happening. If Travis had really said the truth, if he was really innocent...._No, boy, they want to fool you, they can't be right, they..._ "I wanna see him. Just you and him, doc. No one else!", Harris commanded. 

Mark threw a look at Michael, who stood there like frozen, yet upright and determined. The older doctor sought for any kind of cruelity in his eyes, any kind of selfishness. He found none. Michael wasn't a bad man. Just too young and stupid. "Okay", Mark told Harris, hearing his blood roaring through his head. "We're coming up."

Harris had put down the receiver and insecurely stared around in the old run-down apartement. In fact, the distinctive pounding of blood through his ears gave him the adrenaline kick to make a decision. They all had to die in here. Maybe it had been a mistake to trust his lawyer, he could have known that once under pressure Barlow wouldn't risk his head for a client, but the revenge was still in the offing. No one would care about him, but all those people he was about to kill –Travis, the Sloans, that other guy- surely had friends and family, who would all get to know the feeling to deal with senseless death. The moment had come when this whole crazy world would have to pay. All those doctors who regarded themselves as healing angels in white, all the police men, "your friends and helpers", all those phonies who pretended to care to make themselves feel better. 

The instable door to the small room flung open, out of the nothing, and so surprisingly fast that Steve dropped the penlight accidently. He could hear the slight cracking when the lamp burst on the floor. The rays of light that shone in from outside where different to those of the penlight, which had been bright and warm, appealing to human eyes. Compared to that the normal daylight seemed to hold a blue shade, something that made Jesse's drawn face look even more lifeless than before.

Steve gulped and eyed at his wristwatch, intuitively sensing Harris' presence behind his back, so that he was almost precisely able to say how many feet still seperated them. Just now the digital display had jumped for another minute, the minute completing the hour he had spent in a fear he had hardly ever felt in his entire life.

He didn't want to leave Jesse lying on the floor, scared that the young man's pulse would stop beating once Jesse's wrist was released from Steve's hold. But thinking of the last time, he had been in this defensive position on the floor, the lieutenant came to the conclusion that it might be a smarter move to get to his feet and present himself in his full intimidating height. Which he did.

Though he rather stumbled to his feet than getting up, Steve could overcome the swaying caused by the blackness in front of his eyes. His blood circulation obviously had been completely down, which only came to his mind when he was seeing the stars and the blurring edges in his view. On the other hand, Steve was still a sports man, knowing how to deal with first signs of physical weakness without immediatly showing it.

So he stood as hard as a rock between Harris and Jesse's hollow form, so that their kidnapper was at least –if not visibly, though- taken aback.

Harris was aiming with his gun at them, however, Steve's professionate eyes saw that he obviously had not much experience in using it. But that wasn't making anything better. From his long years knowledge Steve knew that people who had never had lessons in using a gun were the ones to cause the greatest messes with them, usually.

"Get up, we're going on a last walk!", Harris told them.

Steve heart sank. So his dad hadn't made it. All he could do now was show off time. Somehow.

"I'm already standing!", he snapped at Harris.

The man shook his head and strolled towards Jesse, though he was never near enough to sent his boot into whose ribs again. "I mean Travis!", he responded casually, raising his left brow.

Steve could practically feel each single hair in his neck standing upright as the pure thought of this stroke his mind. "You can't be serious! Look at him, does he look like he could get up?", he hissed so full of hatred of which he hadn't known that he'd be able to put it into his tone.

"Well...", Harris started to move forward, dangerously close to Jesse. "How about I will help him getting up?" By that, he reached out his hand, the brutal manner leaving no doubt to Steve that he had "helped up" Jesse like that before.

Instinctively Steve also stepped closer to block Harris way when the barrel of the gun was raised at him again. Nevertheless, the other one didn't touch Jesse. He had a better plan. "Well, if you don't want me to help him, do it yourself!", he required from the lieutenant.

Steve snorted at so much cruelity. "You must be kidding! You can do with me whatever you want, but leave him alone..."

"You don't seem to understand me, Sloan!", the safety catch was released by two slightly quivering hands. "Get him to his damn feet somehow or I'll shoot him and then you right now!"

Steve sighed. He didn't have a choice. He saw the madness sparkling in Harris' eyes, heard the need of revenge sounding in whose voice. He had to take him seriously. Turning to his friend, he wondered how he would get Jesse to his feet without torturing him far beyond the level of pain anyone could stand. 

Facing the huddled body on the floor, the apathy in his friend's twisted expressions, Steve had to realize that there was no possibility. His friend looked so fragile, that there seemed to be no part of his body where you could touch without breacking him into pieces like a thin plate. The young man looked so much more dead than alive, Steve wasn't sure if he wouldn't crumble to sand as soon as he only lay one hand on him.

Jesse didn't crumble to sand, but there where times during this ordeal that Steve wished his friend would transform into something light, if possible weightless. Once while he tried to put one of Jesse's injured arms around his shoulders, the young man had slipped out of Steve's grib and the only way to prevent him from hitting the floor was from Steve's position to grasp him around his chest. "Sorry buddy!", he whispered underneath his breath as he felt Jesse's body cramping and the scream that whelmed up inside his friend's lungs, though it was never emitted since Jesse was obviously missing his strength.

Steve had forgotten how they had made it through the door and into the hallway by the time they had got there, leaded by Harris, of course. His memory of the events became sporadic from then, Mark's, however, should be very clear afterwards.

As promised, Michael and he entered the apartement alone, though having argued with Tanis about it had left its traces in the feature of a good dozen armed officers, blocking the stairway one floor down. 

The moment they opened the door, they heard a soft cry, the intonation of it unmistakenly and yet oddly different to Jesse's. The scene in which Mark and Michael tripped like two laiman actors on a small stage, was one of the moments so packed with actions and reactions that they got the image of a chain of domino stones hitting the floor in a fast rythmic manner.

Following Harris out of their dark prison into their undecided fate, Steve had handled supporting his friend, somehow, with a little help from Jesse's instincts, which had probably been alerted by the the adrenaline that the constanst deadening ache was sending through whose body.

But the final step into the strangely sun-flooded room was the step going too far in any possible way for Jesse to bear. A small, tortured cry escaped him, and though it was no comparison to the thundering pain he fought against, it still continued to flicker through the air, long after the actual sound had passed away. Then Jesse broke down, collapsing onto his knees and, since his main hold was his arm around Steve's neck, thereby dragging Steve down as well.

If he hadn't had Steve as some kind of a break, the pure slump to the floor would have probably been deadly for Jesse. Being on his knees, he fell to the side where Steve's arm caught him just in time again. 

Harris whirled around at the unexpected noise behind him, too fast as he should notice soon. He lost balance on his heel and stumbled. Regaining his uprightness quickly, he clenched his fingers and pulled the trigger. A shot rang out and Steve, reacting intuitively pulled Jesse into his arms, trying to protect him without putting his heavily injured chest under more strain. Then the lieutenant squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the pain he had became very accostumed to over the years doing his job. 

Mark and Mike simply stared at the sight in front them which seemed too weirdly disgusting to be true, yet too damn real to be an imagination. While Mike's focus lay on Harris who scrutinized the gun is hands with a mixture of real fear and mock shame, Mark's mind was intruded by the most terrible picture he could think of, the most horrible image _any_ father could think of.

Both of his sons, Steve and Jesse, were on the floor, the one kneeling crouchedly and altruisticly protecting the other one who lay snuggled, yet, discomforted by an obvious anguish, in the older ones arms. While the older boy pressed his eyes closed as though he was expecting anything but good to happen to him, the younger one's eyes were closed lightly, however, not peaceful, just resting in lethargy. A cape of clot blood appeared to cover them, sauced them into a dark-red, dazing color. 

"Don't do that!", Michael was the first one to regain his speech. "Shoot me, if you want revenge for Jimmy."

That free confession stunned Harris as much as it did everybody else. Mike looked at the scene in a calm, reasonable way, seemingly fearing nothing.

Harris only slowly collected together what was still left of his sensible mind. "You...you really wanna die to protect Travis?", he asked, yet, having the unpleasant feeling of knowing the answer.

"He's innocent", Mike replied simply. "If you want to shoot me, shoot me. I'm the one you're looking for. I ended your son's life with an overdose of morphine. I don't regret it. I only regret that this is happening."

Harris chin dropped as he tried to read the young man's eyes. As much as he wanted to not believe him, he did. The indefinite feeling that all this had been for nothing, seemed to be acknowledged. "You....you killed him...", he repeated stupidly. "You don't regret it..."

Still calm, Mike shook his head, his eyes fixed on Harris, staring him into the ground. "If you want to shoot the man who ended your son's life, you'll have to shoot me. If you want the killer... that's you." 

The earth had come to a stand-still. No one moved. Mark and Steve both didn't dare to. Steve had in the meantime opened his eyes again and noticed the bullett sticking in the ground...about one inch next to his thigh. Where it had missed a beat before, Steve's heart was now racing, taking two beats in one while he exchanged piercing looks with his father.

Harris looked down at the the gun in his hand, the same hand he had thrown the candlestick with. He had always been hot-tempered and Maggie knew how to drive him crazy with the smallest things. She hadn't been holding Jimmy the last time Harris had looked at her. But while he had grabbed after the candlestick out-ragedly, Jimmy had obviously come running to his mother. Probably he had known that they were fighting again. 

"Don't make it worse, Mr Harris!", Mike reached out his hand. "Give me the gun. Or shoot me, if you want to. But those people shouldn't even be here...it's not their fault." Now there was regret in Michael's eyes. A hint of how sorry he was.

Harris was speechless. Overwhelmed. And in thoughts. He didn't even realize it, but the first wet drop on his gun-holding hand got him aware of that he was crying. For the first time in the past days, the sorrow became bigger than his rage. Slowly, very slowly, he reached the gun, almost pushed it away from his own body and on the other side a careful Mike grasped the barrel with his long fingers.

Though no sound was audible, the walls seemed to resound of relief. Seconds later Steve was on his feet and at Harris side, while Mark had taken his son's position, carefully examining his friend while he supressed the strong urge to vomit. In the bright daylight, Jesse's injuries almost had similarities with a cruel pattern. The gashed face, the cut arms, the blood-soaked shirt, all those details seemed to complete the work of a higher, mean plan. The plan you needed to break someone. 

The young man winced and moaned through a blood-filled mouth, as Mark carefully put one hand onto his chest to get an idea of his breathing, while he tried to sooth Jesse. Mark had meant to hear something like "not hurt" in his friend's muttered breath, and even if it had been only imaginary, he talked furtherly in a gentle manner. "It's okay, Jess, no one's gonna hurt you. It's all over. We will help you now, you'll be fine. No one wants to hurt you. Just hang on now, okay?"

The first EMT was just setting his first foot over the door entrance, when Mark had suddenly lost Jesse's pulse.


	10. Chapter 9

Okay, sorry again. Have been busy with my internship reports 'n' buying stuff for x.mas and so on, it's really amazing how quick time goes by!! But I'm almost finished with the story, so here is your long expected chapter. I'm very happy that you liked the last one, now here is some relief to the tension, I hope. ;)

*********************

Jen Andrews was once again wondering why exactly she was doing this job. For the past hour she hadn't done anything apart from shutteling the victims of a major car pile up through a mercilessly short-staffed emergency room and somehow managed to keep a clear head. Now all she wanted to do, was drop dead instantly and never wake up again which was, after all the chaos she had had to handle perforcedly, maybe not the best, but a still understandable attitude.

So, when the young woman spotted the man she secretly blamed for the anything else but smoothly running ER, she decided to throw all her politeness over board and confronted him.

"Mr Dawn, I need to talk to you...urgently!", she approached him and took on a posture in front of him that made fleeing impossible.

The administrator pointed excusingly on his watch. "Dr Andrews...I'm sorry, I'm slightly short of time..."

"And I'm very short of temper!", she retorted bitter-sweetly.

Dawn frowned, the visible signs of his growing mispleasure evident on his wrinkled forehead. "May I ask what you are implying?"

"I mean that I spent the past hour, working myself through about twenty victims of a car pile up with less staff on hand than battle-field doctors normally have!"

"That's very unfortunate, of course, but as I see, you managed it brilliantly and now...", he started, nevertheless, not very successfully.

"I don't need to be buttered up by you, Mr Dawn, but this ER needs doctors and a head wouldn't be bad as well as I might add!", she scolded.

He ignored her last comment and tried to make a more or less comfortable peace with the young doctor. "I see your misery, Dr Andrews, but what am I supposed to do? Shall I cut the medics outta my bones?"

She shrugged. "Would be useful, indeed..."

Dawn sighed. He hated doctors. He hated them all for different reasons. But for their unfrequent relation to money he hated them all in the same way. "You have to get my point, I need to watch our resources..."

As he said that, Dr Andrews felt very much in the mood of strangeling him with her stethoscope. "You could have thought about your resources before you expelled Dr Travis..."

Her sentiment was followed by a second of out-raged silence, not only between the doctor and administrator, but also among the remaining staff in the ER that was neither in the busy ORs nor in the examination rooms.

Brandon Dawn's lips curled. "I also need to watch the reputation of our hospital...", he replied, his mouth as thin as a line.

The doors of the ER burst open again and two stretchers were rushed in. Turning around on her heel, Jen Andrews shot her vis a vis a very last sharp glare and hissed:"You'd better watch your butt that no one kicks it!"

A few nurses headed towards the first strechter which was pushed by a very young paramedic who was even whiter than the sheets that covered the motionless body on it. James Haver hadn't been an EMT for long, yet, the ride to the hospital had given him enough to make him age about ten years in thirty minutes.

The scenery he and his partner had entered, packed with their equipment and their usual expectations, had been different to what he had seen before, that at first he was paralysed by the sight of it. In the middle of the room there had stood an unshaven, tall man whose face was covered with water that streamed out of his eyes. His hands had been twisted on his back, held by a stronger and taller man who had panted heavily, while his body had been bending slightly as though he was surpressing a pain that came from the rough direction of his upper chest. Next to that an awkward couple had been standing another man, about James' age, holding a gun in his shivering hands, though he hadn't made the impression that he wanted to use it.

The obvious reason why James and his partner had been called in the first place, was hardly to be spotted since the man had almost seemed to be invisible in an older man's arms. The only thing alerting James' eyes from the very beginning, had been the pally face in front of the dark-blue shirt which dressed the chest the young man had sunk against. 

"I don't have a pulse!", someone had suddenly shouted and two blue eyes belonging the older man met James', as much pleading as horrofiedly insisting.

What had started from then, had been a lesson to young James Haver, that thirty minutes could be an awfully long time when you were trying to get somebody to a hospital while you weren't even sure if he'd survive the next second.

As it had been announced to him when he had hurried in, the young man – Jesse Travis, a not very tall, yet obviously very energetic and healthy guy- had had no pulse and stopped breathing. Along with the older man –a doctor himself as James had found out- they had started CPR and finally got him back, after tiring minutes in which James hadn't been sure if he was really helping this man by pressing his trained hands down onto his patient's pain-tensed body.

Getting an IV into Jesse's arms had made James spit out a shocked gasp as he had wanted to aim the needle. Those arms looked inflamed and the skin had been covered by a thin slithery layer of blood, making it almost impossible to find the weakly visible veins.

The the ambulance the man had woken up shortly and muttered something incomprehensable under the mask that helped him breathing. However, James had had the feeling that even through the thickness of painkillers, which were suppose to burry the patient's consciousness, Jesse Travis had realized in his short moment of awakeness that he was in good hands.

Jen Andrews gaze had already wandered of the whole maltreated body, when she spotted the man on the second stretcher and gulped. Seeing the so well-known faces of Mark Sloan, Amanda Bentley, Tanis Archer and the very unhappily looking Steve Sloan who was fastened to his stretcher, she couted two and two together and again threw a look at the first patient who was wheeled through the ER. What had been nothing more to her but a battered victim of inhuman torture suddenly transformed back into her young colleague, even though the form which lay there had not much in common with Jesse Travis.

"Male, early thirties, several wounds on arms, wrists and face, cracked collarbone, broken ribs. Strong internal bleedings, has been coughing blood...", the pale EMT informed her.

She nodded. "Okay, trauma one. How much morphine did you give him?"

"0.6..."

"0.2 again, X-ray of chest and abdomen, keep 0 negative blood ready, three conserves...", she commanded, running next to the stretcher, passing a confused Brandon Dawn and leaving four human wrecks behind.

"I don't care if you paged one or not, I need an surgeon here, right now!", the young doctor felt like smashing the receiver against the wall of the trauma room. She'd known it. Even before she had started speaking to the nurse in the OR area over the phone, she'd known that this women would wreck her nerves. Murphy's law.

"They are all busy in the ORs!", the nurse on the other end of the line replied irritably, listening cooly to the noise that stroke her ear from the phone. Behind Jen Andrews it sounded as though the hell had broken loose in the ER of the Community General Hospital which was at least partly true. Chaos was ruling.

"But I need a second surgeon and I need an OR _now_!", Andrew shouted, drowning the faint beeps from the monitors in her back.

"I'm sorry, I can't hel...", the nurse wanted to say, but before she could finish her sentiment, the line was dead. 

Alerted by a monotone flat beeping, Andrews had thrown the receiver carelessly onto the phone cradle and whirled around to face her desolated ER staff who were doing all their best to save their colleague's life. But in this moment all their efforts didn't seem to be enough. Jesse was coding.

"Defi!", Jen commanded, and seconds later had the paddles in her hands. "200! Clear!" Like a well-choreographed ballett the nurses jumped back simultanously from the table as two hundreds of voltage shot through Jesse's body, trying to regain his heart rythm. Nothing.

Andrews cursed under her breath. 

"300! Clear!"

The limp form tensed under the energy that was sent through it, then violently slumped back down onto the sheets. To all their momentaneous reflief that enforced movement was joined by slightly hopping beeps, indicating that Jesse's heart was beating again.

__

'For now', as Dr Andrews thought, instinctively throwing a look through the shielding panes outside into the entrance area of the ER where Mark, Amanda and Tanis had sunk into some uncomfortable arm chairs while Steve had been taken away for examination. The young doctor sighed, her eyes pacing over Dr Sloans exhausted face. As much as her sensible mind told her that he was in no state to cut up anybody's chest, she knew it was the only choice that was left. A quick look at Jesse's gaunt expressions told her that she couldn't wait for another surgeon to come out of the OR. 

The young man was just about stable enough to make it for a few more minutes without the pressure in his chest not being reduced. She had to take the risk. But she needed a second pair of professionate hands. Just when Jen Andrews had made her decision, Mark Sloan happened to meet her pleading gaze. The older doctor felt his heart missing a beat as he saw her, forming "Help me!" with her lips.

*********************

The trauma rooms in the ER never matched quite the atmosphere of the ORs during an operation. In the OR the doctors normally shared active conversations while they were going through a procedure they knew by heart, showing off routine in each of their relaxed movements. It didn't mean they weren't paying attention to their patient, but unless it was a very complicated operation the surgeons never awarded their work more affection than they knew was necessary. 

Mark had often quietly admired Jesse and the rest of the ER staff for voluntarily swapping this chilly mooded place of work against the hectic and unresting trauma rooms, where you always operated under more difficult circumstances that enforced three times as quick and crucial decisions from the doctors in charge. Maintaining competence and overview here demanded courage.

A lack of exactly this courage was it, what Mark felt as he entered room and immediatly became part of the this whole efficient engine invented and kept alive by the firm will to rescue a patient's life. Here, no one exchanged hospital gossip with someone else. Each motion by anybody was influenced by the certainity that fatal consequences might follow it.

Wearing a yellow sterile operating coat over her scrubs –just of the same kind as the one that was handed to Mark now-, Jen Andrews stood in front of the X-rays, her eyes narrowed as she tried to figure out what was wrong on the pictures showing the interior of Jesse's chest.

Mark joined her, avoiding to scrutinize his friend who lay on the operating table while nurses were looking after his now rapidly aggravating condition.

"I can't see the lung's been punctured", Andrews announced far from being satisfied with what she saw. "Neither is the stomach. But the amount of blood he's loosing internally must come from somewhere." She shook her head and eyed Mark whose mind was already rattering, his eyes flickering behind his plastic OR glasses.

It was odd indeed. The X-rays of Jesse's chest and abdomen showed no sign of one of the organs being hurt, but his constantly falling blood pressure and blood spitting coughs didn't confirm this diagnosis. 

The doctors' minds raced, trying to find out where it was useful to set the scalpell best, while they knew that time was working against them as much as they knew that it could be their friend's immidiate death when they made a mistake now.

All of sudden Mark's memory screamed at him, letting him realize that he had seen something like this before. Not very often, but on the battlefields of Korea some wounds had looked quite similar. "The arteries around the aorta...they must be damaged...", he said, instantly whirling around to the operating table.

Facing Jesse was like a blow into the belly to Mark, seeing his friend's apathical expressions almost not endurable. Yet, different to minutes before Mark felt motivated by the fact that was in the position to do something for his friend. His fear to make the wrong decision or that they were simply too late was huge, but his fear of what would happen if he didn't even try was bigger. Mark swallowed his angst of self-doubts and self-reproaches he might had to deal with later. Jesse would have done the same for him.

Jen Andrews stood at the table, fumbeling on her rubber gloves while shooting a look of alarmed questioning. "How do you know?", she asked.

Mark pulled the rubber gloves over his hands and both doctors longed for their instruments. "I saw something like this before...", Mark replied, bending over Jesse's shattered body while trying to ignore that it belonged to one of his closest friends. For the next few hours, for the sake of the procedure, Jesse wouldn't be more to him than a body which was hiding a problem that kept the system from functioning properly.

"When ribs break, the loose parts sometimes miss the organs and instead directly damage the arteries which branch off from the aorta. It rarely happens, but sometimes it does...", Mark explained, too concentrated to notice the awe in Andrews' face. 

"That's why he can't breath...", she concluded. "The blood stream in his chest is keeping the lung from unfolding..."

Mark nodded weakly. Then he set the scalpell for his first cut.

******************

On his way from the ER to the lounge, Mark felt his legs shaking. He had pretended distance well to himself as much as to anybody else in the trauma room, but that faded as soon as he was released from his occupation.

Now that he was walking through the corridors of the CGH every so little detail rumored through his brain, keeping this traumatical experience vivid as though it was still bitter reality. Jesse's ashened face under the breathing mask, his lethargically closed eyes the most powerful evidence for the anguish he had been through and eventually thought of giving in to.

Stone-faced Mark passed the door of the restroom and closed it silently behind himself. Then he went over to the sink and started retching. Something he hadn't done in years of being a doctor and still like a relief to him.

After emptiing his stomach, the older doctor faced himself in the mirror over the sink. He saw his bloodshot eyes, the shadows in his face and once again the age in his expressions. He looked weary and tired. Old. 

Mark turned on the water faucet and formed a bowl with his hands in which he let run the cold transparent liquid, squirted some of into his face and washed his fingers that were still holding the sharp smell of disinfectants.

__

Washing your hands in innocence? inquired his mirror image.

Mark tried to ignore it.

__

It's all your fault. You should have been there for him. He came to you for advice and you only neglected him. You gave him the feeling of being guilty of something he didn't do. You knew he relied on your trust. You let him down. You failed!

******************

"Mark? Mark, wake up!", Amanda gently ruttled the older man by the shoulder. He'd been sleeping on the couch in the lounge for several hours now and she'd let him, assuming that he needed the rest. But now she thought it might be good for him to wake up and talk to somebody.

Startled, Mark shoot into upright position and wondered where he was for a moment. He didn't know how he'd come from then restroom to the lounge, didn't know how he had just been able to fall asleep, didn't know how late it was and what had happened in the meantime. Amanda reassuringly squeezed his shoulder.

"Everything's okay, Mark...", she said gently, sitting across him by using the low couch table as a chair.

He ran one hand through his face and cleared his head, giving her a self-concious, sorrowful smile. "How are Steve and Jesse?"

She grinned her beautiful grin, free of doubts that everything would be okay soon. "Jesse's sleeping peacefully, his condition is progressing. As to Steve, it's nothing serious, just a contusion and some scratches. I managed to wrestle him down and give him some sedatives so that he should be sleeping now."

They shared an amused grin, both of them knowing how much Steve hated being at the hospital for reasons other than an autopsy report or lunch with his father. However, even the tall police lieutenant knew better than to mess with the young pathologist. When Amanda asked you to do something, you were better off doing what she wanted. It was her persistence and intelligence that enabled her to easily keep up with the male occupants of her job, and it was her charme and her female intuition that made her even better than those. Her affection for her job as much as for her social life had contributed a big deal to the respect she got from Mark, Steve and Jesse. In those three men Amanda knew she had found three of the straightest friends one could have, three people for whom qualification and character counted more than gender or skin color.

Even if people looked at those issues as something natural, Amanda knew from experience that this attitude was something one had to be thankful for. And she truly was and therefore was willing to lean their friends all of her support as soon as they needed it, just as they were always at her side when she'd ask them.

"I talked to Dr Andrews. She told me what happened in ER just now. She said she would never have thought of anything else but an organ being damaged."

He sighed. "I shouldn't have come that far!"

"That was not your fault. You probably rescued his life. You were there for him!", she insisted.

"I should have been there before!", he whispered, avoiding her eyes.

There had been something about Mark's and Jesse's acting in the past days that had occured strangely to her. Putting her finger on it, it had been from the day when Jimmy Harris had been admitted, but she hadn't paid any attention to it until now. 

It was something in Mark's whole behaviour that ensured her that he was hiding something from her, the same she'd witnessed before when he had told Jesse about the investigations on Jimmy Harris' death and that she would ask Mark for advice. Something had been going on both hadn't wanted to tell her and both had seemed equally ashamed as perpetually burdened by it.

Earlier, when she hadn't been too certain, she hadn't known how to ask, but now it seemed all very clear to her and she wanted to persue her instincts. Amanda took a deep breath. "There is something about Jimmy Harris. Something you and Jesse didn't want to tell me."

This question was another proof of her smartness, thought Mark, he knew it wasn't making any sense to try to hide anything from her. Still, he had a tough time figuring out how to make her understand everything. "That's a long story...", he started carefully, trying to win time to find the right words. Explaining it to her would be about as hard as explaining it to Steve and Mark even had less idea of how she would react to it.

"I've got plenty of time...", she said friendly, giving him the subtle sign that there was no way out. He wanted to be honest and he had to be honest now.

Since he had no plan where to start actually, Mark simply started at the beginning. "A long time ago, when I was still an intern, there was patient in this hospital..."

As Mark had finished his story and linked it to the recent argument with Jesse, he looked up, frightened to meet Amanda's eyes which as he realized in astonishment were filled with tears. At first he thought she was crying over him because he wasn't the mentor she always believed she had. Secretly it matched the feeling he had towards himself, that he was not the mentor he had always believed he was.

"I still don't know how I could do that to him. How I could project my own mistakes so much on him that I wasn't seeing him anymore. I made an awful mistake... ", Mark said quietly. 

Amanda's next deed surprised him as much as it moved him. Never evading his gaze, her fingers reached out for his. She took his hands into hers and closed them softly around his fingers as though she was holding a treasure, something of immense value. He felt her palms and her gentle grip, believing that this simple gesture of friendship was of restoring effect.

"You were always a good friend to him, Mark, he loves and looks up to you as though you were his father. And I know that you love him like your son and you know him better than you want to admitt. He is a lot like you, that's why I'm sure that he will forgive you. Just give yourself and him a chance..."

He looked at her for some seconds, her words sinking into his mind. Even if it was only to give him back his self-confidence, he was extraordinary grateful for her words. Their correctness was maybe still in the offing, but her words had been honest, spoken out of a deep love from the deepest ground of her soul. Mark was Amanda's best friend and the discovery of him being not perfect, not always unmistaken wouldn't keep their friendship from remaining what it had been before. That was what she thought and had wanted to show him.

He had understood. "Thanks, Amanda!", he answered hoarsely. "Thank you so much." 


	11. Chapter 10

Hi!! These are the last two chapters of this story, hope you enjoy them. I wanted to upload them earlier, but things got into my way. This is going to be my last story for the upcoming 5 months. I'm going on an exchange to the USA...I might return with some new ideas. I hope you all had a great x-mas and will have a happy New Year!!! I will miss you stories and your reviews very much!!

****************

Steve woke up with blurred view at his surroundings and headaches that surely would have knocked out Robo Cop and anybody else with more metal than brain mass in his head. He moaned as he tried to turn his head, wondering if they had chosen one of the rooms he already knew from one of his several visits to this house or if he would have a new ugly copy of some bad landscape painting to stare at as long as he would need rest and Steve was sure that his dad and everybody else agreed that he did need some rest. 

Right now Steve had to admitt he didn't fancy the idea of getting up himself, neither he wanted to look at landscape paintings. To the contrary he rather wanted to shut his eyes again and find his recollection of the past few hours of which he was quite certain they were the reason he was here. His memory was burried among his dizziness.

"Good morning, son!", Mark greeted happily, seeing his son stirring and moving and blinking.

"Morning, dad...", Steve grumbled, his mouth felt as though he had eaten soap.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like I rid the 'crazy teacups' non-stop for the past three days...", Steve answered, but he was somehow really certain that this wasn't really his reason of being here. His last visit to Disneysland had been three months ago, when Amanda had forced him and Jesse...

The circle closed and Steve felt his heart bumping wildly in his chest. All of sudden his memory was back, every single bit of it until the last sight he had gotten at Jesse, blood covered and blue skinnend on a strechter. "What's with Jesse?!...ouch!!!" He tried to push himself up, but then was roughly reminded of his meeting with Harris' boot.

Mark padded Steve's arm carefully. "He came through surgery more or less okay and is in ICU now. He is still not out of the woods, but..."

"He will make it!", Steve finished the sentiment determinedly, then added remorsefully, "that was our deal...he wouldn't give up and I wouldn't let him down..."

The way his son looked at him almost ripped Mark's heart out. If that kind of deal didn't show what real friendship was, there was nothing else that did. "You didn't let him down, Steve..."

__

"But I did..." , Mark never said those words, however, Steve could sense them vibrating through his father's voice. "You didn't either, dad...", he said reassuringly.

Mark sunk his head and looked at the landscape painting or any other spot at the wall, totally lost in thoughts. Then finally he looked back, Steve directly into the eyes. "I don't know what I'd do, if I ever lost one of you. And yesterday I was close enough to lose the two of you, gosh, I was so scared. I love you, Steve."

"I love you, too, dad."

Mark smiled again and it almost looked like a real smile this time before he got up. "You rest now, I'll show by later again..."

"Yeah, I'll just rest and look at that wonderful piece of manufactured art...", Steve replied sarcastically, but already feeling hazy again.

"I'm sorry, we don't take orders regarding the room equipment...", Mark grinned, opening the door.

"Alright, guess I'll have to see the manager about it!", Steve shot back, but then the door was already closed.

Steve sighed. This was going to be a long day. So he could as well do what his father had said –as pathetic as it maybe was- and get some rest. 

****

About two weeks later...

Mark stood whisteling at the reception desk, filling in his charts. He'd more or less caught up with his depth of sleep that he'd been suffering during the first days Jesse had been hospitalisized. The young man had quickly been out of the woods and was now well on the road to recovery. Seeing how fast Jesse had got his former talk-active, enthusiastic self back had made it easier for Mark to deal with his own regrets of what had happened, by now the only thing that kept him from letting himself off the hook was an excuse which still needed to come along with a detailed explanation. It occured strange to Mark that by now Steve and Amanda had both already heard this story while the person who deserved to hear it the most was still completely left in the dark.

Despite of the good mood which had generally settled between the four friends again, Mark knew it was something he urgently owed to Jesse. But until now the older man hadn't been sure if his surgorrate son would be in the condition of taking his words as the were meant. Not as an act of affectionate pity or as a justification, but the honest attempt of making him understand. It was to Mark as though he and Jesse had come to a silent agreement about this, since Jesse, if he still thought of it –and Mark was sure he did- never mentioned anything going into the direction of their near past.

As much as his relationship to his protégé felt awkward to Mark right now, he was happy to see how well Steve and Jesse were getting along. Not they hadn't befriended each other before, but it seemed as though the rough time they'd gone through together had cuffed them together in a somewhat brotherly way. Steve showed up each day at CGH with a package from BBQ Bob's which he used to declare as his lunch while Mark, Amanda and probably everybody else in the hospital by now only pretended to believe.

In fact they all knew that the ribs constantly vanished in Jesse's stomach while Steve sat next to the hospital bed, his long legs laciviciously thrown onto another chair or the edge of the bed and happily munched on the indefinable food that cafeteria served to the patients. The same generousity that displayed in Steve's attitude towards his evaluation of the word "edible" was also recognizable in Mark's way to look over the rules.

So when Mrs Higgins, head nurse and paid patient-scare of the station, had come to Dr Sloan and grumpily called his attention to the fact that his own son was "continuesly poisoning the patients", the as an eccentric known medic had only smiled and genuinely replied:"So it be." Though the head nurse had been everything else but happy with this decision, Mark was sure of not violating his oath with it. After all, if you referred to BBQ Bob's food as a "poison", one would have to think about calling the hospital food "highly concentrated hydrochloric acid". 

Mark smiled to himself as he closed his last chart for today. He would say quick "Hello" to Jesse and Steve now and then go down to the pathology lap and see if Amanda needed some help with a fiddly autopsy. Some time things had to get back to normal.

*********************

In Jesse's hospital room, the bath-gown-dressed young doctor sat with wrinkled forehead over the chess board, desparately looking for some sign of aporia on Steve's pokerface. He decided to move his knight after a long time of self-discussion.

Steve thoughtfully covered his mouth with his hand, trying not to show how he was grinning under it. Beating Jesse at chess was easier than to snatch away a sweet from a two-year-old. Yet, it was incredible that, even after about a million of lost games, he still didn't give up. Before Steve could set the whole drama a quick and painless end, he heard a reluctant voice from the other end of the table.

"Can you do me favor?", Jesse had leaned back in his chair and ignored his lost battle of strategy game for now, though Steve still made fun of it.

"No, I won't let you win...", the lieutenant said playfully, however, he knew that this wasn't about putting kings off a checkered board. 

Jesse wasn't sure to win Steve for this little mission and he was certainly not eager to fool out any of his friends. But he needed this small freedom to set some things right which had been wrong far too long now. 

**********************

Walking along the corridors, Steve Sloan knew he would kick himself sooner or later for agreeing to this. 'If I promise you that it is neither illegal nor self-destructive, will you help me, even without knowing?', Jesse's words echoed through his mind causing him a slightly uncomfortable feeling. It wasn't that he didn't trust Jesse, but with such a wicked mind as his friends' one could never be sure that the mentioned legal and not self-destructive stuff wouldn't turn out to be the opposite.

Nevertheless, Steve had finally said "yes" to his stubborn vis a vis and left for his task, though not without gleefully checkmating his friend before.

When he saw his dad, he put on his most effecient I'm-the-nicest-son-in-the-world-grin and greeted his father, thereby blocking whose way that was directed furtherly down the hall. "Hey Dad!"

"Hey son!", replied Mark and frowned when Steve remained where he was, directly in front of him, planted into the ground like a giant mammut tree. "Something wrong?"

"No...well, yes...well...errr...both somehow", Steve stammered. He was such a horrible actor.

"So it's something like 'nes'", Mark raised his eyebrows suspiciously. One of the things that had made Steve such a lovely, easy child was that he was probably the worst liar on earth.

Steve had regained some certainess about his intention in the meantime. "Thing is...I need you to come to the station with me. I have something...uh...important to sort out there and I need your help."

"Oh...can't this wait, I was actually on my way to Jess..." 

'_That's why we're both standing here right now in the first place'_, Steve thought wryly before he cut in on his dad. "No...you're not. I mean, it's not very convenient. He was sleeping when I left."

"It's two o'clock p.m. Is he feeling sick or something?", Mark inquired, acting earnest. He had to admit that he liked this somehow. 

__

'Bad move', Steve thought, hopelessly struggling for a change in the pace. "No...I think he is just depressed 'cause I beat him at chess." _'He's never going to buy that...'_

"You _always_ beat him at chess!", Mark argued, suppressing the urge to giggle.

__

'I should become a fortuneteller...' "Look, dad, it's really nothing, he's just tired. So will you please come help me with my work?"

"You're voluntarily asking me for hel...", Mark was musing loud and gleefully, when Steve had enough of their little cat and mouse game and simply used his physical superiority to drag his father with him.

***********************

Jesse cautiously opened the door to the lockers room and found it empty to his relief. He had made it here without being noticed which was a little miracle, though he had raised his chances of succeeding by talking Steve into keeping his father out of line. During this operation Mark was Jesse's most frequent fear, especially since he had taken over Jesse's patients which kind of made him to a doubled danger.

The young doctor opened his locker where he found some OP clothing that two weeks ago he had carelessly thrown into it before heading home. The clothes somehow looked this act of neglectence by being a bit creased and crumbled, but at least they were still clean.

Over the years Jesse had got used to dressing quickly, especially since Murphy's law obviously enforced emergencies to come in when he was just showering. The interesting side-effekt of it was that Jesse had developed a real skill for hearing the smallest beeping or ringing sounds even with an amount of water in his ears.

Jesse was about to leave the room again, when the door was opened. The young man jumped back in defense, not knowing wether he'd have to come up with a more or less good excuse within the next few minutes or nothing would happen at all. 

Something did happen. Something Jesse had counted less with than with anything else and which threw him completely out of the line for at least a few seconds. For a moment he simply stared into the intruders face, not knowing how to look at his vis a vis. He could look reproachfully, he could look frightenedly, he could look dismissvely, but none of those options didn't quite match the way he felt. To his own surprise he didn't feel anything apart from surprise.

Michael didn't seem to know how to look either. He smiled a forced "Hello" and excusingly pointed over his shoulder at the door. "I am...only here to get my stuff. A guard's waiting outside. I'll only empty my locker and then never bother you again..." He sounded stiff, almost proud, although Jesse got it quickly that what seemed like a lack of emotion was actually too much of it.

Jesse was frozen in his motions, all he could do was eye his former intern with a bewildered expression on his features. Up until this moment it had never occured to him that probably no one would have denied the fact that everything he had been through was basically Mike's fault. Only that he himself had never really considered it. Jesse had always felt that he himself was the problem. What would he have done if Michael hadn't done it? He had all the time blamed himself for thinking of it, but he had never blamed Michael for doing it. And he had no intention to start with it now. So, out of a weird impulse that later he couldn't define anymore, he held out his hand to his former intern. 

Michael looked at the offered hand with hesitation.This seemed a bit like an absolution to him of which he wasn't sure if he deserved it. But the insisting gesture of forgiveness was too tempting to ignore it. Dr Travis had been the only one in this whole Micheal had really felt guilty about. The mercy in this simple shaking of their hands impressed him and made him feel he should say something. "I...I'm sorry..."

Jesse didn't know what to answer. He could see Michael's point for being sorry, but he couldn't feel any anger. Not anymore. From Jesse's point of view there was only one thing left that he could say to Micheal, the only thing that he really meant and of which he knew Mike needed it:"Good luck."

The intern smiled, sheepishly scrutinizing his former supervisor who looked perfectly normal except the fact that he wasn't wearing shoes. Micheal had hardly been a doctor long enough and probably wouldn't be a doctor for long enough to experience it himself, but he could see what people meant when they clamied doctors to be the worst patients. "Good luck", Mike mumbled and stepped aside to allow Jesse free access to the door.

As the young doctor exited the lockers room, the guard outside friendly wiched him a good day and then didn't pay any attention to Jesse anymore. How was he to pay attention to someone who basically looked like hundreds of others in this hospital? Jesse probably was the best-camouflaged patient you could be in a hospital. He was masked as a doctor. Sliding into the usual hospital traffic, Jesse first needed some time to acquaint himself to the fact that no one seemed to have any complaint about him being here. He was common sight in this house, he practically belonged to the fittings.

And, of course, no one else was able to feel the unsteadiness of his legs which still sought instinctively for some sort of support in case it would be necessary to keep the body from hitting the floor. No one except for himself could feel the soft ripping coming from the scar a few inches under his sternum. His skin had become whiter in two weeks of hardly seeing the sun from outside the hospital, but then again he was always teased for being "pally-nosed" which even was the truth when one wanted to compare him to all those sun-roasted beach boys who'd spent their entire life surfing in Malibu while he'd been freezing at the Great Lakes. Therefore the lack of brown skin maybe wasn't so outstanding to others as it was to him. 

All in all, Dr Travis had full rights to be where he was, stroding through the halls of the CGH and visiting his patients. Though Jesse only headed to visit one patient. He had to sort out something.

Standing in front of the door to Phillip Morton's room, Jesse hesitated. He had actually no idea what he should do or say, but he felt his past had been following him far too long without ever catching up. Now it was his turn to stop and wait.

**__**


	12. Epilogue

Today was one of Phil's better days. He didn't need a lot painkillers to get along, he was awake and almost felt like reading, though he knew that his eyes had become far too bad for it. Yet, he had a clear vision and his mind and senses were't dulled by the influence of well-meant, but unnecessarily given antibiotics.

It was also one of his last days as the older man knew, blinking into the warm sun outside the window. This trip to the West coast had proven to be a good decision. Even though he hadn't counted with ending up in a hospital here, he guessed that there existed a lot worse places to die. The light flooding into the room was always a bit hazy through the smog, but it still was the sun. He had even got to see the pacific before being admitted here. 

When the door opened slowly, Phil looked up. Dr Sloan had only been here some time ago, it couldn't be time for the usual rounds again. Dr Mark Sloan was a pleasant company as much as he was great medic. He was even somewhat older than Phillip, but certainly didn't look his age. His expressions were good-natured and his devotion to the practice of medicine seemed so new, so honest, Phillip almost envied Mark for his vitality to live what had also once been his dream. 

The pair of blue eyes that lurked through the door now didn't belong to the older doctor, yet somehow reminded Phil of him as there was also a certain mischieviousness sparkeling in them. He smiled. "Hey Jesse!"

"Hi..." Jesse quickly shut the door behind himself and stood not at the edge of the bed, now really facing exactly the problem whose considering he'd just thrown over board carelessly. What should he say? Why was he actually here?

Fortunately, Morton spoke first: "I see, you're back in charge. Congratulations."

The younger man smiled sheepishly. "It's a bit too early for this, I think."

Phillip grinned. "Oh...so you're on the run?"

"Wouldn't put it that way. Let's just say I left without setting a time for my return," Jesse replied, his hands cramping nervously.

"Well then, I'm happy to call you my visitor, even if not my doctor. But Dr Sloan is a nice guy", Phillip remarked, while Jesse took place on a chair next to the bed and grinned, a healthy kind of proud flickering through his smile.

"Yeah, he's wonderful man...", he said absent-minded.

Phillip sighed regretfully. "I'm glad you've found a better mentor in him than you did in me..."

He didn't even know why, but Jesse felt an unpleasant chill down his spine. Maybe it was his fear of having to face the consequences of a decision he had made years ago that now came up again. He had never been too sure if what he had done then had been right. And thinking about the past three weeks didn't make it easier to decide wether to justify or blame himself.

Jesse's silence told Phillip more than words would have done. He didn't blame the boy for being confused. Practicing medicine was often a thin line on which you easily lost balance. Some things just were not either right or wrong. And secretly, Phil knew that Jesse was just trying to find a way through the labyrint. And still there was a question that had been bothring Phil for years. Something that just didn't fit. "You thought what I did was wrong. You could have denounced me, but you didn't' You didn't tell anybody. Why not?"

All of sudden Jesse knew what he had been afraid of all the time. This question. _Why not? _Good question. He shrugged. "It didn't feel right to me...", he muttered, aware of the paradoxon occuring here. _How could you think of something as wrong and then not feel like setting it right because that seemed wrong to you as well? _It was exactly the question he could read in Phil's face as well in his own mind. Was he crazy?

Jesse took a deep breath, suddenly reminded of something that Phil had once told him. "I guess I didn't because I understood you. I still think it's wrong, but I understand why you did it."

Phil's eyes grew wide, but they held little shock and more realization. "You were scared of it, weren't you?"

To his surprise, Jesse nodded without even thinking about it. It had, indeed, scared him. That the power he had to heal people was the same power he could use to kill them and that you sometimes thought that patients were served better by the last than by the first one.

"I was scared of you", Phil said, causing Jesse's head to jerk up. 

The young doctor glanced at his former mentor in disbelief. "Me?! 'Cause you thought I would run you down at the hospital board?!"

The old, ill man shook his head in firm denial. "No. My reputation didn't matter to me that much. But I always felt that someday I'd recognize that you were right and I was wrong..."

"And, did you?"

"Never got that far..."

Jesse laughed out. "Then I think we'll die discussing who is right and who is wrong..."

"Oh, I surely will!", Phillip replied, his voice cracked by coughes. He wasn't used to talk so much. Jesse's eyes filled with regret over this thoughtless comment, but Morton simply shook his head friendly. He had long made peace with everything. His life, his past, his inevitable death. But noticing the sorrow clouding the younger man's lifely expressions made him feel sorry himself. " Death is part of life and vice versa... Everybody has to die, Jess, some sooner, some later. That's the only thing that is for sure."

"I think I haven't been a doctor for long enough to see it that way...", Jesse answered maturely.

Phil only blinked. "As a doctor you'll never see it that way and you're not supposed to see it that way. People will still die when you've been a medic for fifty years and you'll feel bad every time. But it's not to shatter you faith in yourself. Trust me, Jesse. I know what I'm talking about..." He smiled slyly and Jesse smiled back. Then he slowly got up from his chair.

"Thank you, Phil...", he said, standing at Morton's bedside for a moment, scrutinzing the former resident. The presence of mortality was almightily covering Phillip Morton's body, but it seemed to have missed his mind. 

"Anytime, my friend. Anytime."

At the door, Jesse waved a good-bye and smiled at Phil who wearily grinned back. It should be their last real talk. But now it all seemed right to them. Somehow right.

Jesse had seperated from the anonymity of the hospital crowd and was on his way back to lonesome room. Sneaking was easy for him. Lucky as he was no one seemed to have realized that he had only been wearing socks all the time. When he reached out for the door handle, Jesse was satisfied with himself. Going astray in this house was really easier than snatching a sweet away from a two-year-old.

One socked foot already in the room, Jesse was all of sudden starteld by voice from behind his back and froze.

"Dr Travis, may I inquire what makes it so hard for an academic to understand the simple appeal of 'Stay in bed and rest!'?!"

Jesse rolled with his eyes and steeled himself for the confrontation with the most intimidating weapon he had. Putting the puppy-dog-expression into his eyes, he turned around on his heel to face the monster of head nurse. "Mrs Higgins, nice to see you!"

**__**

A few days later....

Jesse had found the front door of the beach house unlocked as the Sloan's often left it when they expected guests. That was almost always the case, since 'invited or not' wasn't a matter in the rating of visitors and Amanda and Jesse were still existing.

The young doctor was in a good mood, after all he had just gotten all his freedoms as a normal _healed_ citizen back. Yet, he had an unsettling feeling about coming here which ironically was his reason to be here. Out of an old habit he steered his first steps into the kitchen which was empty, at least for the cursory observer. 

From somewhere near the ground some muffled curses were audible. Curiously Jesse lurked over the counter and was greeted by a sight that naturally robbed him of a small giggle. In front of him Steve Sloan lay sprawled on his back on the floor, his upper body to two thirds hidden in the box under the sink where the drainpipes were set. 

Steve had been wrestling with the sink and its outlet for about an hour now without remarkable success, but instead the first certain signs of claustrophobia overwhelming him. So, when he heard the joyful voice which could belong to only one person in the whole universe, he wasn't quite able to share this affection for this _wonderful_ morning.

Jesse's mouth twisted to a broad, Ernie-like grin as he waved his friend a "Hi" over the kitchen table and inquired:"What exactly are you doing there?"

Instead of an answer he got a shower of Steve Sloan's long-to-be-vented sarcasm. The sink hadn't been a good listener at all. "Hey Jess! Get it that you were released this morning."

"Oh yes...all healed and still in possession of at least half of my mental abilities...", Jesse replied, watching Steve how he attempted to set the pipe wrench.

"So far existing in the first place...", the off-duty lieutenant snapped, swearing under pantings as the wrench slid away again. Then he gave Jesse another sharp glare from his exposing position in the kitchen fittings. "I'd love to get up and chat with you standing uprightly, but I guess I'm stuck here...literally..."

Jesse grimaced in mock pity. "Which brings me back to my original question. Why are _you_ doing this? You know, normal people would get themselves the yellow pages and call a plumber!"

Steve shot him the sharpest of all looks, while his fingers clenched around the pipe wrench. "I would have thought 'bout that, too, thank you. This is just dad's way to show me that he can make me do this for the rest of my life, in case I ever start a diversionary maneuver on him again to distract him from _someone,_ who is supposed to stay in bed, haunting the hospital." He had known he would never get away with it. All the time his father had hovered stuff through the departement, doing a work that was about as intellectually demanding as...well, yes..as repairing an outlet, he had known he would pay for the pleasure to see how his father was just doing what he'd wanted him to do without ado. And now, Steve Sloan was finding out the exceptional difficulty of attempting to kick your own butt while being burried under a sink and a mess of disordered pipes.

The pure innocence in the eyes that met his him drove him nuts. Jesse scratched his head. "Oops. Maybe I should be lying down there then, eh?"

"At least you wouldn't have any trouble with getting stuck...", Steve growled. He knew he was aiming slightly under the belt line, but he was sure that Jesse could handle it. "I hope it was worth this whole circus..." 

Jesse nodded, instantly seeming a bit sad and completely earnest. "Yes, it was. Thank you, Steve."

Even under sink, Steve wasn't a total idiot and knew better than to crack another joke. Instead he even smiled, indicating that he wouldn't hesitate two seconds when asked to do it again. Even if that meant another hour in some tiny cupboard. "Hey, no problem..."

The younger man all of sudden remembered why he had actually come here, not that he'd really forgotten about it, just for moment he had pushed it aside. "Erm, Steve, where's your dad?"

Steve watched him knowingly and was now actually happy that he had an occupation for the near future. "He's on the deck..."

Jesse nodded, obviously reluctant to go. For a moment he stared into the space of the kitchen, making the impression of a lost child. But then he quickly found his direction again. "Okay, see you later...", he took a deep breath. "And don't you assassinate yourself with the pipe wrench!" 

It was no morning for having your breakfast outside on the deck. Clouds were covering the Californian sun and a heavy wind was blowing from the sea, giving the few tourists in sight a rough time in their Bermudas and Hawaii-Shirts. The air was humid, tasting of rain, some 

stray drops were trickeling against Mark's face.

Yet, everybody knew there was no way preventing that Mark would take his first sips of coffee on the deck with the –even on those days- amazing overview of Malibu beach. It was his way of finding balance again, where he was collecting the strength and inspiration for his job, for both the hospital and the police departement. He loved it, simply to stand there, feeling the breeze in his face and seeing the ocean in front of him, lying like measured and still always in motion.

Compared to this big, never-ending blue the life a human being seemed -oddly philosophically and in a wonderful way- small. Not small as in the meaning of worthless, but small as a part of a higher idea, a small, yet important part of the whole. The sea was like mankind, always changing in a fast pace, never the same as just seconds before, though in some way eternal. Man raised and fell just like waves, sometimes quietly, far outside and sometimes roaring on the beach while the sunlight still sparkled on them.

Mark enjoyed the thought of being a wave. Maybe, he mused, it was really sign of him getting old, accepting those cheesy pictures of life as something not so unappealing or unrealistic.

His coffee had cooled down to drinkable and he was just taking the first sips from his mug, when he heard how someone exited the house and came onto the terrace behind him, taking the first steps reluctantly.

The older doctor turned around, his mind still a little distracted from the real world and wearing a dreamy gaze that only won substance as he faced the person towards him and smiled warmly. "Hey..."

"Hey...", Jesse answered, blinking against the soft watery drops on his cheeks, yet the rain wasn't as heavy as it occured to him at very first moment.

An uneasy silence settled over the both of them, leaving them with nothing but their own thoughts and whipping of the approaching storm. They didn't really know how to start the conversation, knowing there were a lot of things to be said, however, not certain about how to come to terms. Only when they heard the soft clinging of metal against metal from inside the house they seemed to have found a thread to go on.

Thinking back of his meeting with Steve, Jesse almost laughed thinly. "You shouldn't have sent _him_ under the sink...after all it was _me_ who asked him for help..."

Mark was again stunned as much as he was moved by the loyality those two men were sharing, even though they were sometimes acting about it as though they were kids. But putting yourself into line when a friend needed help was the thought behind it, no matter if the price consisted of your life or just hours trying to mend the sink. "Well, both of you deserved some teasing action...but I bet you didn't hit it much better with Mrs Higgings coming after you..."

Jesse grimaced. "Yeah, she is a very..._captivating_ person..."

Both doctors giggled, however, it was somewhat forcedly.

Mark sunk his head, realizing it was up to him to make the next step forwards. As some indication of his starting talk, he abandoned his coffee mug onto the table, neglecting it by the time it was out of his eyesight. "Jess, listen..." 

Jesse was listening, in fact that was the only thing he felt enabled to. The weight of the words Mark was preparing for seemed no light, so the younger man leaned himself against the banister while Mark remained next to him facing the ocean, his hands clenched around the white painted wood.

Then Jesse listened through everything, dulled by his friend's story, his mind only fixed on the sentiments that left Mark's mouth with a mixture of hesitation and regret. He heard about Mark's internship, about the one patient he had, Mark's grandmother who should die of Alsheimer...so far the official diagnosis. When Mark came to the point admitting that he had himself killed her with an overdose of morphine, Jesse saw the tears sparkeling in his mentor's eyes, though he didn't allow them to flow.

"When you came to me, saying that you thought it was better if that boy was dead, then...something inside me just snapped. That's why I lost it with you. I should have known better, but it just...you know...hit a nerve. And then as you accused me of not believing you...I wasn't there, Jess. I was back in my own history, over fourty years back. I was scared that you would make the same mistake that I made...which is about as bad. I blamed you instead of myself..."

Jesse remained all silent, chewing on his bottom lip while his emotions only slowly caught up with his mind. An awkward mixture of sadness and pride washed over his body, shaking him as though he was being grilled in an oven and cooled in a refrigator at the same time. Again he felt how selfish he himself had acted, like a stubborn child, not even giving Mark a chance to explain the reason for his behaviour. And Jesse thought it was perhaps the same selfishness that came along with this strange feeling of pride caused by the knowledge how much Mark respected him as a doctor. 

Mark accidently misinterpreted Jesse's silence as some kind of waiting coolness, therefore he added shamefully:"This isn't supposed to excuse or justify my behaviour...but I guessed that if you would hear me out, you might see that you never lost my trust and maybe you're able to forgive me...someday...You're a wonderful doctor, you're skilled and good-natured...nothing's gonna change that. Please don't lose your faith in yourself..." 

At Mark's pleading tone, Jesse sensed it was now his turn to say something, to make his part of the apologizing. "There is nothing to forgive", he answered and noticed how dry his mouth was. So, he cleared his throat, then continued, frightened of sounding lame. "I was...I thought that you'd be mad at me for...dunno, being a bad doctor. I couldn't expect you to approve my thinking, I...I...", he started stammering, smiling sheepishly, "...I couldn't approve it myself. I didn't mean to disappoint you..."

Mark's head jerked up, bewilderment flew over his expressions before it settled into sorrowful calmness. He focussed on the younger man. "You wouldn't be able to disappoint me. Not by acting like a human being..."

He put a reassuring hand on Jesse's shoulder, when their gazes slowly drifted apart, Mark directed to the ocean, Jesse finding something extraordinary interesting about the table next to them. Then, as though conducted by the same line of thoughts crossing their minds, both about in unison whispered:"I'm sorry..."

They smiled, earnest and still both relieved of heavy stones falling from their chests, as though the metal fist that had held their souls firmly slowly pulled back. 

Habitatively Mark's hands wandered into his pockets, intending to shield them from the cold chill sent out by the increasing blow from the sea. That was the moment he felt something striking the palm of his hand, something consisting of cold metal and long-worn leather. He immediatly wanted to slap his head for not remembering it earlier. "By the way...", he started and pulled his hands out of his pocket. "While Steve and I scanned the saved evidences in the Harris case, I found something of which I guess you might want it back..." 

He held his hand out to Jesse, who confusedly and curiously peered at Mark's palm as whose fingers unfolded. Then it was as though a small, but significant ray of light ran over his face, making his boyish grin creep out for the first time in weeks, holding pure gratitude, while Mark was equally grateful to see this smile again.

Jesse cautiously took his father's watch into his hands and scrutinized it for a second. The golden framework and the white face of the wristwatch reflected the shadows the cloudy skies were throwing onto them, the leather looked used and comfortable in its timeworn gathers while it longed for his owner's wrist. 

Mark carefully eyed his friend who clumsily fumbled the watch around his wrist, the movements of his fingers seeming unusually uncoordinated. Indeed, his expressions were almost manic. 

Jesse concentrated on his watch while his emotions were getting the better part of him. Everything he had kept under cover for the past two weeks dealing with his physical recovery now seemed to whelm up all at once. Harris, Potts, Morton, Jimmy, Mark, Steve, Amanda, even Brandon Dawn and Walter Day were rading his mind, their faces and the echoes of their voices, the flashbacks on each of them getting more and more hasty as though they were trying to drown out each other, becoming faster and more insisting the more time Jesse gave them, like a rollercoaster coming up speed.

"Jess...", Mark concernedly ruttled his friend out of his trance and succeeded after some time. As Jesse snapped back into reality, there was for a very short moment a clear hint of fear in his eyes, before those clouded with a none-telling expression.

"If you want to talk, I'm here...", the older doctor offered, realizing how Jesse was desperately looking for some way out of his misery that didn't allow him to take controll over his emotions. He probably had talked enough for now. So Mark shrugged naturally and smiled knowingly down at the other one's externally stoic face. "And if you just need a shoulder to cry, I'm here as well..."

The rollercoaster was accelerating, leaving Jesse no way of trying to steer it. He didn't want it, but he eventually had to admit he had no chance. Mark's offered shoulder was tempting.

Even before he knew why, Jesse felt water streaming down his face that wasn't coming from the ever so slightly pouring rain. His cheeks had cooled off in the sharp wind and the hot water that started to stream out of his eyes left no doubt to him what actually were his own tears. Each tear drop would remain on his face, even after rolling down his cheek, since he could still feel the warm, unforming traces that remained as long as he didn't try to wipe them away which he only did at the very beginning. Then, as though his inward emotional barrier opened, his head fell to the side and bounced against Mark's shoulder.

Mark felt Jesse quietly sobbing into his shoulder, burrying his wet face in his friend's shirt. The older man knew there wasn't much more he could do for his young friend, -his son in some strange, but equally emotional deep way- so he just held him in a fatherly embrace, soothing him gently.

The older man knew some wounds had to heal slowly and there was no good use in rushing their recovery.

When Amanda entered the beach house at lunch time some time later –through the unlocked front door, of course- Mark and Jesse were just closing the doors that lead to the deck. Outside a rough storm was raging against the building, but inside the beach house the cosiness would never vanish, even without the sight at the dancing sun rays outside.

While Steve was still nowhere in sight, it didn't take Amanda more than a glance at Mark and Jesse to discover that their problems had somehow been resolved and were out of the world. The blue sparkle in Jesse's eyes only was glazed by a shimmer of redness, the blood vessels around the pupills a little more visible than usual. But Amanda didn't question anything, she just quickly exchanged looks with Mark's which assured her of everything being on its steady way back to normal.

Just when greeting each other, the three of them were starteld by triumphing yelp from the direction of the kitchen. "I've got it!" 

As they entered the room, Steve smiled at them as though he had just found the holy grail with his pipe wrench. While the tall police lieutenant was still working himself out of the narrow cupboard under the sink, the full committment to this task was displayed on his face as he was beaming like a silver plate.

"You practicing for some job in 'Home Improvement'?", Amanda inquired gleefully.

"Har har har...no. But in case you're interested in the astonishing fact that someone is actually really _working_ here, one of the seals lacked. I have renewed it...", Steve explained, struggeling to free himself of his cage without getting caught in a muddle of pipes.

"So, it's supposed to be working again?", Mark asked, but didn't wait for an answer, he simply turned the water on, he and Amanda watched it as it vanished in the outlet.

Steve let out a mute sign. "Thanks, Steve, it was really kind of you to spent three hours of your precious free time to mend the outlet...", he growled sarcastically.

In the meantime Jesse's heart had went out to Steve who wriggled impatiently under the sink like a bug in a spider net. So he bent down to his friend, intending to lean him a hand to pull him up when he caught the eye of Steve's construction with the seal.

"Urm, Steve?"

Steve stopped in half-motion down in his little cupboard and met Jesse's doubtful eyes. "Yeah?"

"Are you sure you fixed the seal?"

"Yeah, why?"

"'Cause it's lacking..."

"Wha...?" Steve hadn't even time to finish the word as the water from the pipe splashed down onto his face.

As much as they pitied him, Mark, Amanda and Jesse couldn't help, but burst out into laughter while Steve cursed as he finally managed to get to his feet. There he stood in his full height, the water dripping from his shirt and hair while he eyed them with blushing expressions.

"Well...", Mark said satisfiedly, "don't you all agree that this is a really wonderful day?"

He grinned at Jesse who smiled at Amanda who laughed back to Mark. Friendship was great thing. Maybe even the best you could have in the world.

And even Steve was giggling as he went to find himself a kitchen towel.

*************

I hope you enjoyed this a bit!! Thanks you so much for your patience and your support!

xxxx Georgia


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